would yet live. My past and our future.
Abernathy tilted my chin up to face a gaze of such intensity, I might have burst into flames had I endured it on our first meeting. Eyes that had seen death, had known life, had killed and nearly died for me, now anchoring me as he pushed into me for the very first time.
He came to rest fully within me, the pressure of him like a discovery. A previously unknown place where we were possible.
He began to move. Slowly at first, acquainting himself. Acquainting me.
With each stroke, the delicious friction seemed to build on itself, multiplying within me until, half mad with the need for more, I began arching my hips up to meet him.
“Oh, God, Hanna.” Abernathy’s voice seemed to dissolve with the same pleasure turning my insides into molten sugar.
Sounds came from me. Unfamiliar, animalistic, hedonistic sounds. They found their answering call in Mark, matching me cry for cry.
Profane, holy, primal and perfect were the words we spoke to each other.
When I thought I might die from the incomprehensible intensity, Mark scooped a hand under my thigh, turning me over. With one hand buried in my hair, he angled my face to retain eye contact as he drove into me from behind.
And what a vision he was. Savage and beautiful in equal measure. His abdominals flexing, chest tensing, dark locks of hair falling in his smoldering eyes. Each increasingly desperate thrust rode in like a wave, breaking over me, breaking in me, until I broke with it.
Bucking and shuddering, I screamed his name as I came utterly undone.
His teeth bared, Abernathy buried his face in my neck, his teeth gently nipping the skin in mutual conquest as he lost himself within me. Those quick, hot pulses which forever marked me his.
Which marked us mated.
Abernathy’s face rolled toward mine on the pillow. He patted his chest, and obediently, I snuggled into it, smelling the living salt of him.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“We sleep,” he said in a voice already drugged with satiated pleasure.
“I mean, how does this whole werewolf thing happen? Am I just going to like sprout a tail one of these days? Should I invest in elastic clothing? Oh! And what about babies? Do werewolves have litters?”
“Are you that eager to bear my loin-fruit?”
I could literally hear the smile in his voice.
“No,” I said. “Especially since you just called it loin-fruit.”
“Transformations usually happen with the onset of an emotionally inciting incident.” Abernathy repeated this with the patience of a man who had clearly said it many times before. “Litters are unusual but not unheard of.”
“You know,” I said, my breathing having returned to something like a normal pattern. “You never finished telling me about Lily.”
“Must we always have these conversations when I’m naked and just had my mind blown?” Abernathy flopped an arm over his eyes.
“I mean we’re mated now so you probably should be able to tell me about your long dead love.” With lazy fingers, I traced the sloping line of his clavicle.
“Hanna,” he sighed. “You are my long dead love.”
In the silence that followed, a choir of crickets broke into spontaneous chorus.
“Come again?” I pushed myself up on my elbows, gazing down into his passion-slackened face.
“Some heirs are more powerful than others. They can accept the responsibility of that power, or can turn away from it and live a normal life.” To my great alarm Abernathy’s sleepiness was increasing in direct proportion to my curiosity.
“And if they elect to live a normal life?”
“They eventually die and the cycle begins again. Just as it did with you.” In silence thick with meaning, I let this sink it. “You were born a warrior,” Abernathy said around a cavernous yawn. “But tonight you chose to accept that destiny. And I will always fight at your side.”
Nuzzling my face into his neck, I breathed him in. This man, this being who I had alternately feared, and wanted and loved.
My destiny. My mate.
At his side, the one place I forever wanted to be, I finally gave in to exhaustion.
“Come with me.”
Aroused from the best sleep of my entire life, I awoke to find Abernathy standing before the window, his naked silhouette limned in silver.
“I thought I already had.” Dreamy and slack-limbed, I dropped back down to my pillow like a shot bird.
“Come with me outside,” he said.
“But we’re naked,” I answered, my eyes still closed.
“That’s kind of the point.” I felt the bed depress as he sat down next to me, his fingers dancing up my spine.
Shivering, I sat up. “But what if the neighbors see?”
“They won’t,” he said. “Promise.”
So it was like that, wearing not one stitch of clothing, I followed Abernathy down the shared hallway of the old Victorian home that had once been my mental ward after a terrible divorce.
“Are you ready?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Ready for what?” With one arm across my breasts, the other covering my lady-bits, and my eyes everywhere at once, the only thing I was ready for was to crawl back into bed.
“To run.” In that light, with that expression on his face, Abernathy didn’t look like a 431 year-old werewolf. He looked like a ten year-old little boy.
“You want me to hold your hand and run naked down the street.”
“That’s what I want.” He grinned at me, teeth white in the moonlight.
“But my feet—”
“Trust me,” Abernathy said.
I did.
Pulling in a deep breath of sweet night air, I realized for the first time that I could smell the pollen, the bird feathers and twigs in their nests, the sleeping flowers, the sprinkler wet pavement and chlorophyll rich grass.
Fueled by this olfactory revelation, I relinquished my modesty and gave Abernathy my hand.
Before I even knew what I was feeling, the world became a blur around me. An impressionistic painting punctuated with lights and sounds and smells, flashes of detail too small to see with the naked eye.
I glanced downward, perplexed not to feel pavement biting into my feet.
Because I no longer had feet.
Delicate russet paws flashed out before me, the elegant forelegs attached to them swift and sure.
I was a wolf.
As I had when it came to mating with Abernathy, I had envisioned in great detail what my first transformation would be like. The B-movie low budget version of bulging pockets of skin and cracking bones, sweating, swearing, and screaming.
There was only bliss.
Bliss and terrific speed, my mate a dark blur beside me as we raced past the edge of town and into the foothills. Into a whole new world of scents. Pine, and beetles and moss and dead leaves.
Joy as I had never known suffused my entire being as we broke into a clearing. We loped to a stop, padding through soft grass to find the edge of the cliff overlooking the city. Lights scattered like glowing confetti on the stretch of land below.
Then there was only Abernathy.
Abernathy against the obsidian shards of the mountain, the sky, and the moon.
THE END
Also by Cynthia St. Aubin
Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery
Love Bites
Love Sucks
Love Lies
The Witches of Port Townsend
Which Witch Is Which?
Which Witch Is Wicked?
Which Witch is Wild?
Which Witch is Willing?
The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist
Unlovable
Unlucky
Unhoppy
Unbearable
Unassailable
Undeadly
Unexpecting
From Hell to Breakfast
Unraveled
Also available as Box Sets…
Disordered
Dysfunctional
&
The Complete Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt
Volume I
Volume II
Volume III
Jane Avery Mysteries
Private Lies
Lying Low
About the Author
Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master's degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she kept writing instead. When she's not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she's hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Texas with the love of her life and a surly cat named Patches.
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