Page 22 of Loving Graystoke's Heir

The face of the gorilla, easily two to three times the size of her own, was calm enough to give her some confidence. Strange that having her hand held by such a powerful creature didn’t instinctually lead to panic.

“Oh, God. I’m losing my mind.”

Before she could think better of it, she pulled her hand trying to release it from his hold.

Rather than free her hand, Tamsin felt the gorilla pull her in. All she was able to do was allow him to tug her closer, stumbling across the leaf-strewn ground and into his embrace. She felt a rumble of sound that moved through his chest and into hers. He still had her hand where their fingers were tucked together, but then his massive arm curled around her, cradling her against his shoulder.

The soft cushion of his hair against her cheek made her smile, remembering some of what Donal’s mother had taught them as children. “Mountain gorilla.”

A soft grunt of sound rolled through his massive body and into her ear.

It seemed silly, even though her entire situation seemed like the best and worst kind of hallucination, but she knew that the sound was a gentle one.

“It’s really you in there, isn’t it?” She had spoken without thinking, and as his head turned in her direction, Tamsin was stunned at the delicate shift in his eyes. Instead of the dark eyes that she had seen a few moments before, she saw the whites surrounding the irises of Donal’s eyes.

He was there. Inside the gorilla somehow.

“But that’s not right,” she spoke aloud in a soft tone as she gently rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and felt the soft hair pillow her head. “You’re not inside like a shell. Or maybe it’s like a suit.” She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to make real sense out of her life and failing miserably. Opening her eyes again she saw Donal’s eyes dissolve into the dark irises and sclera of the gorilla again. “It’s real then,” she could hear the marvel in her voice. “You shift into… into this.”

Tamsin wanted to laugh again, but not as a way to stave off her fear, but as a kind of celebration. The stories.

“Those stories are true.” She felt her face flush with heat. “When they called your great-grandfather an ape-man they didn’t realize what they were talking about, did they?”

The gorilla leaned down, his broad brow shielding her eyes from the tree canopy above their heads.

“When the people said that he led the apes, they just didn’t understand what they were saying. They probably didn’t even understand what was really happening.” She continued to talk, working through the ideas in her head, and it wasn’t until she felt him release her fingers that she felt that aching loneliness again. “Wait.”

And this time she took his hand in both of hers, marveling at the difference in size.

“I can’t believe you never told me.”

* * *

He knew he’d pay for it later, but Donal shifted back into his human form, paying close attention to the woman he held momentarily in his arms. As he watched her, he knew the very moment that she realized what was happening. The way she fluttered her fingers over the back of his hand and trailed her touch up his arm and then across his chest made his whole body come alive.

The last time Tamsin had set her hands on his chest he’d spent the night deep inside of her body and his mind wasn’t the only part of him that remembered.

Donal knew that she wouldn’t be immune to his touch, nor would she be able to ignore the heavy press of his body against hers.

“I didn’t tell you,” his voice whispered against her cheek, “because I didn’t know what was happening.”

Even though he’d thought it through in his own head over and over again, Donal had never admitted any of this out loud, but he knew that she needed to hear the words as much as he needed to tell her what had been going through his mind.

He’d missed talking to her about so many things. It wasn’t until he had set foot on this continent just how much he’d relied on her to help him figure out solutions to his problems. And how much peace she brought to his soul.

He’d fought so hard to hold onto the humanity in his soul when he’d been well and truly on his own, struggling with his own identity.

“I thought-”

Tamsin’s fingers traced three shivering lines across his middle, and he felt his muscles bunch and clench at the searing sensation of her touch.

“I thought I was dying.”

At his admission, her fingernails scraped at his skin. It had been a surprise for her to hear it, but it had also hurt and Tamsin had been hurt by him before. All Donal could do was try to get her to understand why he’d done it.

“I had been to doctors, too many doctors, and all of them told me the same things. I was hearing things, seeing things, and they wanted to put me on anti-psychotic drugs. Maybe if I had listened, if I had taken the drugs, maybe I would have stayed home… with you.”

He heard her soft sigh of protest and continued.

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