she licked me.
“Licked you, you’re mine,” she told me.
“And you’re mine,” I told her, but it wasn’t a joke for me. I wasn’t sure it was a joke for her either. I felt the truth of it roll through me, full of power.
My lips claimed hers, and she kissed me back just as hard, the two of us trading furious kisses. Her thighs were tight around my hips, and she pressed her hips forward against mine insistently. She reached down and caught my cock in one hand, pressing it against her core.
I slid inside her slowly, and she let out a moan, her fingers tight on my shoulders. Her back arched faintly, exposing her long, naked throat, and I bowed my head to cover her neck in kisses. Her back arched more, and my hands were tight on the perfect curves of her ass as I began to move with her.
She bit her lower lip, looking down at me as the force of our bodies slammed against the door, over and over. She let out a low moan as her orgasm built, and then rocked forward, biting my shoulder to keep from crying out. I kept on going, pounding inside her as I felt her shatter around me, as she bit down hard enough on my shoulder that it would’ve hurt if I could’ve felt anything but her body against mine.
I pressed my face against the side of her face, against her ear and the sweet roundness of her cheekbone, as I felt myself shatter inside her.
The two of us paused, both panting, our bodies still wrapped up in each other’s.
“That was amazing,” she murmured into my ear, glancing at something over my shoulder. I half turned, still holding her pinned against the wall, to see the teddy bear on her dresser. “If only the bear weren’t so judgmental.”
I’d met quite a few bear shifters, so I said, “Bears usually are.”
I kissed her again, more slowly, and she kissed me back as if she might never let me go.
I’d be okay with that.
24
Lily
“We need to talk, old man,” I said as I sat down on the couch in the living room.
My grandfather frowned, but closed his newspaper and lay it down on the side table beside him. “Why does it sound like I’m in trouble?”
“Did you know I’m not really a tiger shifter?”
He froze, and that was all the answer I needed. Lord. It was true.
“You know I can still see when you hold still,” I said, when his freeze had gone on too long.
“I saw you shift when you were a baby,” he admitted. “Into the cutest little orange tabby, just like you were the cutest little girl—”
“You’re not going to make things better by telling me how cute I am,” I cut him off.
“How cute you were,” he corrected, just to be a jerk, and I gave him a dark look.
“Why didn’t you tell me, if you knew?”
He sighed. “Because you were so happy. What does it matter what kind of cat you were? And…”
I raised my eyebrows when he didn’t go on.
“You were being bullied,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember how hard that was—”
“Oh, I do, believe me.” Those were the sharpest of childhood memories: Hearing my name, followed by the titter of someone’s laughter. The moment at lunch, gripping my tuna sandwich in my hand, when I realized my ‘friends’ had met at the mall without inviting me. The look on Blake’s face when he intercepted a note being passed in our class…then went right over the desk at the guy who had started it.
I wished other memories were as sharp, like picking wild raspberries with Lupine in the woods, or reading with Archer in the grass at the park, or coloring with my mom at the kitchen island on a rainy afternoon as the rain droned against the glass.
“You got your confidence back then,” he said. “You were convinced that you were a tiger, and it didn’t matter what anyone said to you. You just smiled at them like they didn’t even matter and walked on.”
It’s hard to be impressed by how small someone tries to make you feel, when you know you can eat them.
I heaved a sigh. “But all these years?”
He shrugged. “I thought maybe things had changed…I’m not an expert on shifters or magic or tigers or raising little girls, for that matter.”
For a few long seconds, the silence hung between us.
Then I said, “You did okay anyway, old