The Hellhound's Un-Christmas Miracle - Zoe Chant Page 0,45
shirt alone.
Sheena ran her fingers along his collar. She undid the buttons one by one, resisting the urge to kiss his chest. She wanted to see him. All of him. If this was the only time they had together, she wanted as much of him to remember as possible.
He was lean under his shirt, muscles tight and hard under her fingertips. His heartbeat thudded against her touch. Old scars crisscrossed his ribs. Sheena paused, her fingers brushing the edges of them. Shifters could scar, but it took a lot more to leave a lasting mark than it did for humans. For Fleance to have this many scars…
“Don’t,” he said softly. She looked up at him and he said, “I could feel you wondering. I don’t want you to worry about them.”
“That doesn’t make it any better,” she grumbled. He might not want her to worry about Parker, but she could put the dots together and figure out what he wasn’t saying. Even a wooly-headed—
Cold washed over her. Was she still a wooly-headed sheep shifter? Those bursts of anger, the strange emptiness inside her—what if her sheep was gone already, forever, and she just hadn’t noticed?
Fleance caught her face with one hand and turned her to look at him. *You’re still you,* he sent to her, and the mate bond hummed with concern. *As long as we have this.*
Of course. She must still be wooly-headed, to forget that. The cold retreated as he kissed her and this time, she couldn’t quite manage to pull away as she tugged at his jeans. The button was stiff and she almost growled against his lips as she tried to free it. As soon as it was loose Fleance shucked his jeans off and kicked them over the side of the bed. His hands were busy, stroking along her thighs and veering dangerously close to shorting out Sheena’s senses entirely.
She ran her fingers under the elastic of his boxers, and he groaned. He rocked on top of her, his hips bucking as he swore under his breath, but he didn’t tell her to hurry up or slow down or any of the things she could feel teetering at the edge of their connection. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against her. She could feel exactly how big he was, but her eyes still widened when she pulled his boxers off.
Whatever Fleance picked up via the mate bond made him growl and pull her close.
“Mate bond or not,” he growled. “You’re mine. I won’t let anyone take you from me.”
His breath was hot against her neck. When he kissed her, her whole body thrilled. She wanted to slow down, she wanted to speed up—she wanted everything, all at once.
“Oh…” She trailed one finger down his chest, from his collarbone to the deep v of his hip and stopped at what she hoped was an infuriatingly short distance from his cock. He moaned and sank closer against her and she relented, wrapping her fingers around his thick length. Heat pulsed between her legs.
She tipped his head back up, one finger under his chin. “Your turn.”
His eyes went black with desire. “Does this mean you’re done looking?”
Sheena bit her lip. “Yes?”
He pulled at her robe, unfastening the belt, peeling the fluffy fabric away inch by inch. “Then it’s my turn.”
This would normally be the time she got a horrible sense of self-doubt. The timing was right, and the background—she should have been writhing with embarrassment that she wouldn’t live up to whatever expectations of lissome womanliness he had in his head. But she was strangely, unbelievably confident. She didn’t even have a slight sense of foreboding, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She told herself it was because Fleance had already seen her naked, but that wasn’t it. There hadn’t been anything sexual about that.
Maybe it was something to do with the intense concentration on Fleance’s face. He made her feel so special that there was no way she could disappoint him. Or—
*Sheena.* Fleance’s voice brushed against her mind like a particularly amused breeze. *Whatever you’re thinking about, stop.*
“What?”
He touched the space between her eyebrows and she realized she was frowning. She relaxed and—oh, God, at last, something normal—blushed.
“All right,” she said, tripping over her words a bit, “I’ll stop thinking about how amazing you are, then.”
“Was that what you were thinking about, before you got distracted?”
Her blush deepened. “How do you know I was distracted?”