CHAPTER EIGHT
Sheena clapped her hand over Austin’s mouth and narrowed her eyes at him. “If you cut me off one more time, I’m going to sink my fangs into you so deep you’ll be excreting tooth enamel next week.”
He blinked at her a few times before slowly looping his fingers around her wrist.
“Don’t move that hand away unless what’s going to come out of your mouth next is ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
His gaze flitted to the side.
“You really have to think about that?”
He shrugged.
She sighed, dropped her hand, and turned back to the television.
“Yes, ma’am?”
She crinkled her nose at the toilet paper commercial featuring prancing woodland creatures. She never could understand why toilet paper needed to be advertised. People weren’t going to forget they needed it. “Do you even know what we were talking about?”
“Do I remember what started the argument? No.”
“You know, at this point, I don’t really expect you to. We can’t have a conversation without it spinning in six different directions.”
“Sorry,” he murmured.
She sighed and turned to look at him.
He was leaning against the headboard in her motel room, gaze averted downward, looking sheepish.
She was trying to get better about picking apart what Austin did on purpose versus what was involuntary, but she’d only known him for a couple of weeks. Those weeks had been anxious ones.
She’d fully intended to hurry back to Sacramento, but Blue and Diana had visited her at the motel and sat her down. While she sat shamefaced with a large orange Slushee stain on her shirt, Blue had laid out a reasonable argument for her staying put for a bit.
The longer she was away from her father, the more their pack link would fade. Coyotes were wired to be anxious when they were away from their packs. Their instincts were to hurry home, even if home wasn’t the safest for them. Alphas had a way of clouding their thoughts so they didn’t know any better. Blue hoped if she could break that link, when she returned to Sacramento, she wouldn’t get too comfortable and forget why she’d left in the first place.
Already her mind was clearer, her resolve firmer. It was as though the scales had fallen from her eyes, and she could see just how toxic the place was. Without the film of magic, her father’s numerous lies became more obvious.
He was a sociopath. He’d proven that in the nasty voicemails he’d left for Sheena, though she’d only listened to the first few before Diana had made the executive decision to retrieve all her messages for her. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she’d said. “He’s already told you that you’d better be dead in a ditch. What else are you expecting to hear from him?”
“I want to hear him say he’s going to leave,” she’d murmured. “Fat chance.”
She’d been half-joking, but apparently Blue didn’t joke about alpha duties.
“If you think things there are so bad that he needs to be forced out, we’ll take care of it,” he’d said, “but you’ve got to give us a little time to do this without starting a war. Give us some time.”
She hadn’t gone to Maria to stage a coup back at home, but maybe they needed one.
Austin gave her left earring a little flick, pulling her out of her reverie. “Yoo-hoo. You gonna finish your lecture?”
She snorted and nudged the bottom of her earring the other way to stop it from swinging. “Wasn’t going to be a lecture. Just a reminder.”
He grinned. “Well, remind me then.”
“So you can make that hangdog face like I’m oppressing you?”
“You are oppressing me. You won’t let me watch the game.”
“Because your team sucks and you’re going to get your blood pressure up.”
He harrumphed, and she almost forgot what had agitated her. He was good at that, though—pulling her out of her head. With Todd having gone home, Austin needed the chatter, apparently. And he also needed to empty out some of the words he’d stuffed behind filters in his brain for years on end. She didn’t mind. She liked his voice. The coyote part of her had started to equate it with things like safety and comfort.
The human part saw him as a friend and normal. He was a friend who gave the best hugs. She wasn’t sure which of them needed the hugs more.
“Really, though,” she said to Austin. “You’ve got to work on that talking-over-me thing. It’s kinda triggering.”
“I can see how it would be. Still can’t imagine what that was like for you. Being told who you could be seen with. Where you could go. How to look. You’d think a group of shapeshifters wouldn’t be so hung up on that kind of stuff.”
“They’ve got all the same vices as regular humans. Just more fur.”
He laughed, as did she, but his amusement quickly fell off.
“What’s wrong?”
“Full moon’s tonight.” He whispered the words as though there was magic in that particular combination and he feared it. She thought that was sweet.
“I can hardly forget,” she said. “I’m a bundle of nerves right now, even more so than usual. I feel like my body wants to turn itself inside out to force an early shift. Maybe I haven’t been doing this long enough to be good at ignoring that urge. It’s been five years, but maybe that’s not long enough for people like me who got turned.”
“You gonna be okay?”
She waved him off and turned back to the television. “I’ll be fine. One of the people from the pack will swing by to get me later, and we’ll go out to the desert for a run.”
“How long’s that take? The running, I mean.”
“Moonrise until dawn, usually. Recovering from it tomorrow’s gonna be hell.” She laughed.
Austin didn’t. There were certain topics their senses of humor simply didn’t align on. He worried about the shifter stuff, even more than she did, it seemed.
“You don’t need to be worried,” she said. “Shifting is natural. Gotta let the dog out sometime, and what better place than in a controlled setting?”
“The last time you were on four legs, you got yourself dinged up pretty good.”
“I was doing the best I could, and look at all the good I did, huh? Those extra boundary patrols Blue implemented help, right? Lance and Kenny scooped up a couple of outsider agitators trying to sneak into the territory to spy.”
“All that tells me is that you’re in more danger than I previously thought.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Are you trying to make me scared? A couple of weeks ago, you were trying to assure me my father wouldn’t be able to track me by my credit card statement.”
“No, I would never do that.” Austin gave his head a hard shake, indignant. “I just worry you’ll get too comfortable and something bad’ll happen to you.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I think I’ll be okay. I’m more worried about my mother.”
“Your mother’s been taking care of herself this long. She knows what to do.”
“Obviously, she doesn’t, or else she would have left already.”
She hoped so, anyway. Her mother simply choosing not to leave in all that time would have been the worst possible letdown, and Sheena didn’t want to let herself truly believe it was a possibility. Certainly, in all those years, her mother would have had at least one avenue to get away. Why wouldn’t she have taken it if it were there? Couldn’t her parents have helped? Sheena had never met them. Her mother wouldn’t talk about them when her guard was up, but Sheena knew they were alive and that her mother’s childhood had been pleasant enough. That was all she knew.
Letting out a breath, Sheena crawled to the head of the bed. She put her back to the headboard and drew her knees up close to her chest. “I…do wonder if she’d even leave if she was given an open door to do so. I don’t like thinking that.”
“She’d have to, right? If what you say is true, there’s nothing keeping her there except your father.”
“I don’t know why he’d even want her. I know that’s horrible to say about my own mother, but he insinuates it all the time. He says no one else will ever want her, and I always think, so, let her go then, you know? There are enough women in the pack throwing themselves at him that he could just make a clean break and start over with someone else. What’s stopping him? I certainly wouldn’t cry over being tossed out if my mother was safe.”
“Dunno. Sounds like you’re convinced he’s not your father, though.”
She gave Austin a scolding look.
She hadn’t brought the subject up before, but that brain of his had a way of skipping off into territory most people were too tactful to tiptoe into.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“It’s all right. I’ll answer. Yes, I’m pretty convinced. Being away from home has given me the freedom and ability to pick apart the things that were just fog in my brain before.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I can only speculate. Everyone is so tight-lipped about my parents’ match. I think my mother was already pregnant when they got married. Maybe she didn’t have a choice but to go through with it. Gods, Austin, your buttons. Why are they always like this?” She scooted closer and undid his lower four shirt buttons. Somehow, he’d skipped one, and the plackets were all bunched up. “There. Much better.” She gave the hem on each side a straightening tug.
“You grooming me?”
“Oh, shoot.” She grimaced, realizing how he must have perceived her attention. “Sorry. You must hate when people do that.”
“I guess I don’t mind so much when you do it.” He smoothed the fabric over his belly beneath his palms and looked at her shyly through the corners of his eyes. “You don’t make me feel so pitiful.”
“You’re not pitiful.” She gave his cowlick a little poke. His barber had cut his hair too short, and she’d been seething about that all day. She wanted to march down to the shop, snatch his clippers away, and make him give Austin back the tip money he didn’t deserve. Self-advocacy wasn’t Austin’s best thing.
“You’re just sayin’ that because your mother brought you up to be nice,” he said.
“If telling the truth makes me nice, so be it.”
“That’s not the only reason,” he said quietly. She’d started smoothing the corners of his pocket flaps. Smiling, he took her hands and playfully shook them out.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t waste your time on fixing me.”
“Not trying to fix you. I’m a shifter. Grooming is a compulsion.” Oddly, though, it’d never been an especially powerful urge around anyone else except her mother.
Austin reached around Sheena, who’d grown distracted again by the wrinkles on those flaps, and grabbed the remote. He held it up and grinned. “A-ha! Game time.”
She was still getting used to being able to freely laugh, and she had to force herself to just let it out. It was always worth it when Austin was around. That triumphant smile of his always managed to warm her up inside.
He got her settled back into her former position and shooed her roving hand away from his shirt pocket again. “Who do you think your real father is?” he asked.
“I have no idea, except that he has to be a black guy who’s quite a bit taller than my mother. My mother doesn’t have a lot of people around her who aren’t in the pack. If he’s someone from around town, she’s been very careful to never let me see her with him.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Yes.” Then she tried to play off the too-quick confession with a shrug and said dolefully, “No. I mean, I just don’t know what kind of mess that would dredge up. We’ve got enough problems already. The last thing my mother needs is more of them.”
“You look like you need a hug.” Austin opened his arms, and one corner of his wide mouth inched up. He was throwing her own method of getting him out of his funky moods back at her. She hadn’t thought he’d noticed, but of course he had.
She couldn’t slip anything past him. He was often paying attention even when his focus seemed to be on other things. She wasn’t used to people noticing her in that way. It felt good.
“Ha ha,” she intoned, even as she eased closer to him and let him close his arms around her. He always seemed to know exactly how tightly she needed to be held.
She put her head against his chest and closed her eyes as he squeezed her and rubbed his chin against the top of her head.
At the press of lips to her forehead, she started from shock, and Austin loosened his arms from around her.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling away. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it’s all right. I… I…”
I what?
She didn’t know what to say, so she just took his hand and stared at it.
Yes, she’d been startled, but only because she wasn’t used to getting her comfort from the opposite sex. Her social sphere was tiny. What little solace she got came from the few other women in the pack bold enough to spare a kind word for her and who sometimes tried to include her in their groups during pack runs.
“I…” She closed her mouth again, not really knowing what she was getting at or what the correct response should be to a touch that had been so affectionate and natural.
Having no experience in matters of intimacy, she could only consult her instincts and try to shake out a course of action. They were muddled, though. Human versus coyote. The human part of her thought, More of that, please. The wild beast in her, though, read hesitation in those striking eyes of his and decided, A peck is not enough.
The human part of her must have agreed, because Sheena found herself pulling him back close to her, turning to sit on her shins, and closing her fingers over the collar of his shirt.
“You think I’m some kind of monster, don’t you?” she asked softly. “You sit here with me because you’re curious about me and maybe a little grateful that I can tell you don’t mean to be rude, but deep down, what I am is strange to you.”
“No.” He shook his head hard. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s the only way I can explain how in all this time, you haven’t done anything more than squeeze me and kiss me on the forehead like I’m a good little monster. If I’d been anyone else—”
He clapped a hand over her mouth and looped an arm around her waist. “If you’d been anyone else, I would have been in and out the same night and gone on home, not worrying the slightest bit about everything I got wrong and how stupid you must think I am. If you’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have stuck around.” He scoffed. “Ask around at the bar. See what the ladies in Maria think of me. They think I’m an idiot, but that doesn’t matter if I can give them a pretty good ride.”
“Shh.” She didn’t care what they thought. All that mattered right then was what Austin thought of her. His eyes were warm and pleading. His hand at her waist was firm and possessive, moving her in millimeters onto his lap, and she hadn’t noticed because she was too busy philosophizing.
“In my mind,” he said, seating her firmly on his thighs, “you’re a normal lady with normal needs, right? Friendship, I can give you that. Companionship, that’s okay with me, too, as long as you don’t pick on me. I can give you other things, too.”
“Like what?” she whispered as his hand fell away from her mouth, but she already knew.
Her fingers were already working his shirt buttons free of the holes, palms already grazing the coarse hair on his chest, admiring the strong muscle beneath and bones that didn’t come apart and re-meld every full moon.
He was perfectly human, just like she’d been once, but she’d been around Coyotes for too long. She didn’t understand what was natural. Fast or slow? Who made the first move, or did it even matter?
“I know I don’t have a whole lot.” His lips were at the bend of her neck, warm hands smoothing lightly up her spine. “But everything I’ve got I’ve earned, and I feel good about the work I do.”
“You have enough.” She nudged his shirt down his shoulders and took a moment to just appreciate the sculpting of his arms, proof of his hard work and persistence. Proof of his independence, in a way. He’d wanted to be something different than he was told he should be, so he’d taken a risk. He’d run away to make a stand.
She’d done the same—was doing the same. She was a work in progress, trying not to run back home the way she’d always been ordered to.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured against her cheek. His lips skimmed along the edge of her jaw, and he playfully nipped the lobe of her ear, making her earring dance. “You know that?”
“Even like this?”
“It’s the only way I’ve ever seen you. What else is there?”
All the hair and the makeup. The expensive clothes and shoes designed to impress the brand-conscious. Styled on her so everyone could see that Bruno took care of what was his and that he was a safe bet.
But he wasn’t safe to trust, at least, not for the things that mattered to Sheena. Like respect and affection and love.
“Why are you crying?” Austin asked, thumbs brushing away moisture across her cheeks. “Did I do something wrong? Say something wrong?”
“I’m not crying.” She took off her shirt for him and dropped it over the side of the bed. “I’m not.”
If she was, she couldn’t help it. For too long, she’d been told she didn’t have anything to cry about and that she was lucky. She wasn’t lucky. If she were, the best thing that had ever happened to her wouldn’t have been getting ditched on her wedding day.
She didn’t look at Willa and think, “That could have been me.” She looked at her and thought, “I wish I could be that free.”
Why can’t I be?
Shaking things up wasn’t enough. She needed to get away for good.
She just needed to figure out how.
She loosened the button of Austin’s jeans and let down the fly, and he found her lips. Holding her head where he wanted it, he worked into her mouth and swept his tongue across her frozen one, teasing it awake, making the tips twine. Moaning in a duet with her.
“Take these off,” she whispered as she gave his waistband a tug.
“You sure?”
“Please.” She nodded and crawled off his lap.
As he worked his pants down and his briefs along with them, her hand froze over the catch of her bra, her gaze rudely fixed on the area between his legs.
It was one thing to huddle in a group of shapeshifters on a full-moon night because everyone minded their own business, for the most part. They were all too concerned with the imminent discomfort that they didn’t pay attention to what was dangling from other people.
But Austin wasn’t stripping for utilitarian purposes. His clothes were off because he’d kissed her on the forehead and perhaps the canine part of her had decided that was foreplay.
“You need some help with that?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. He unfastened her bra and laid a burning trail of kisses across her forehead. She was in a daze, the wilder parts of her curiously receding, her inner beast quieting.
She was still transfixed, overwhelmed, frozen in her ignorance.
Should I move? Should I touch?
It was to her advantage that Austin’s attention moved him so quickly from one task to the next. His mouth was seeking out the newly uncovered peaks of her, tongue strumming against her nipple.
Her fingers curled rigidly into the covers as her breath caught in her chest. Mouth hanging open, her eyelids shuttered, her body pulsing with heat that needed to be let out.
He cupped her, bringing her breasts to his mouth and leaping his tongue from one hard peak to the next, and finally she was able to draw in a breath.
I should do something.
She could participate, but she didn’t really know how this was supposed to work. She didn’t know if there were steps she should follow or some rules to be mindful of.
She just knew she wanted to touch him, so she slid her hands into the back of his thick hair and nuzzled her cheek against his stubbled one. And she knew she wasn’t close enough to him yet. Not enough of their skin was touching. So, she climbed onto his lap again and wrapped her arms around his neck, vaguely registering the tug of her sweatpants and her panties along with them. That was secondary to the pleasurable rasp of his facial hair against her chest and the tickle of his breath against her belly. Understanding was difficult—there was confusion in her brain about what the woman part of her needed versus what would satisfy her eager beast. Those things weren’t supposed to align, at least not for Coyotes. That was why so many of their women lost their minds. They wanted things they couldn’t have.
I can’t have…
The information was tucked away, locked down tight in her brain like the dog had boxed it up and sat on it, and Sheena didn’t trust that part of herself enough to know if the dog was working for her or against her.
She knew what she felt like, though, and knew that Austin’s fingers stroking hesitantly between her legs was inciting a bright, teasing starburst of prickles that had her thighs weakening, her fingers stiffening against his scalp.
And when he slid a finger inside her, she had to fight against the instinct to propel herself across the bed and cover herself because what she was doing went against everything she’d ever been told—that she was worth more “whole,” whatever that meant.
As if anyone who really wanted her would care.
“Relax,” Austin whispered. He rolled her onto her back and eased her pants down the rest of the way. “Why are you so tense? You don’t trust me?”
“I…” Panting, Sheena brought her arms up to cover herself, not that it mattered. He wasn’t paying attention to her breasts or what was between her legs. He had her right foot in his hand and was tenderly kissing the sole, then the ankle. Calf. The ticklish back of her knee, and then up her thigh, and then he kissed down the other leg, ending up with his lips against the worst of her wounds. It was still healing and would probably finish after she shifted for the full moon.
The way he lingered on it, massaging the intact flesh on the sides, frowning at the arch, made her heart skip beats.
“What the hell was going through your mind, running off the way you did? Tracking through the damn desert, where anyone could have caught you. Or you could have gotten snapped up in a trap if you crossed the wrong ranch, or fallen into a ravine and not been able to climb out. Not to mention the snakes and—”
“Who else if not me?” she asked softly.
His incredulity was clear on his face as he eased between her legs.
“I couldn’t wait for someone else to do it, so why not me?”
“Nothing I say is going to change anything, so I’m going to hold my tongue. Except to do this.”
“This” was a fondling of the crease between her legs with the tip of his tongue that had her instinctively scooting away, but apparently, he’d predicted that trick. He clasped his arms around her thighs and yanked her down to him. His thumbs traced down the seam, making a trail for the tongue that followed.
The initial panic and mortification she’d felt at his face being there were blessedly fleeting. How could it be wrong if he was getting no pleasure from it?
But then, she wasn’t sure that he wasn’t. The murmuring noises he made as he licked, probed, suckled, proved that his participation in the act could in no way be mistaken as obligatory. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself, making a game of coaxing moans from her by putting his fingers into her at times and withholding them at others.
Five minutes of that, combined with his devilish protracted drawing out of her clit between his lips, had a growl of warning rattling her teeth, and her nails dug into the meat of his back.
She was writhing away from the pulse thrumming in her core even as it built. Even if Austin had stopped right then, she wouldn’t get away from it. The little quakes were already coalescing into larger, breathtaking spasms that she could only ride out, screaming for mercy.
He didn’t seem inclined to give it. He was milking every last iota of resistance out of her, but for him, it was okay—wanted. Austin wasn’t going to take more than he could afford to give, and for that, she wanted to reward him by giving him all she could.
She grabbed him under the arms and tried to pull him up her body, but she was weak and limp. Sated, but somehow still hungry. And he was…laughing at her.
“Austin!”
Still chuckling, he dragged his tongue across slick lips and put his weight on his forearms. “Just hold on. You’re supposed to be the patient one.”
“So I should suffer patiently?”
His eyebrow darted up, and his smile fell away. “You hate it that much?”
“No. You misread me.” She gave him another tug, and that actually got him to move. He lined his body up with hers, nestling his aroused sex just below hers. “I…like what you do,” she explained. “It was unexpected. I thought there’d be more, I dunno, poking.”
“You thought?”
“I guessed. That’s what people do, right?”
“You sound a little bit like that isn’t a rhetorical statement, but you know I’m not the best at gauging nuances.”
“It’s not rhetorical.”
He fidgeted with a coil of her hair, and realization showed in his widening eyes. “I’m your first?”
“Will be.”
“No.” He shook his head hard and tried to pick his body up off of her as though mere proximity would demean her to a more ruinous state.
She tightened her thighs around him. “Why not?”
“Because we can’t,” he said with exasperation. “I’m not doing that to you.”
“Doing what?” she asked through clenched teeth. “What are you doing to me that I’m not consenting to have done?”
“You’re a virgin. I’m not going to just…” He made a hand waffling gesture and then wild eyes indicative of a loss of control. “Not going to do that.”
“Why the hell not? Are you so concerned with me saving myself? Because I’m not. For too long, people have made the decision for me that I would wait until I was given away to some Coyote I didn’t want, but screw that.” Her voice was getting louder and louder, but she didn’t care. She was tired of not being heard. “Their values aren’t my values. I’m in control of my own body from here on out, and if you have a problem with that—”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he interjected. Sighing, he let himself down onto his arms again and hung his head. “I just…think it’s a big deal, and yeah, I want to do that with you, but I can’t do it here. Not the first time.”
Confused, she shook her head. Nothing was making sense.
“I mean, you’re in this place…a rented room that doesn’t belong to either of us. Some temporary place where you’re staying while you consider your options. It’s not a place where you want to make memories, is it?”
Her immediate reflex was to open her mouth to tell him, “That doesn’t matter,” but somehow, she was able to staunch that.
He was, in his own way, looking out for her. Perhaps setting meant more to him than it did to her, but she could give it thought. It wasn’t a “no” but a “you can do better than this.”
It was about time someone had started telling her she deserved better. She just hadn’t expected the sentiment to come from someone she’d known for only a couple of weeks.
And why not? she thought, grimacing. He hadn’t known her for long, but he knew her better than damn near everyone back in Sacramento. He knew her better because he’d been curious about her in a way no one else had been. If that was because she was a paranormal oddity to him, so be it. It was better than nothing.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Sorry,” he whispered back, his smile twitching a bit at the corners. “My first time was in the back seat of a car, and I still feel like a shit for it. At the time, it was all right. I was sixteen, and at sixteen, a kid like me wasn’t gonna think things all the way through, you know? As time went on, I regretted that we were so desperate about it.”
“Because you’re not an animal.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” He twisted a lock of her hair around his fingers and put his head down beside hers. “We’re all animals, when it comes down to it. Some of us are just more honest about it than others.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I can hardly forget.”