Page 44 of The Buck Stops Hare

When he met my gaze, his eyes had gone vivid with color, the green in them vibrant.

Every breath he took seemed to draw something of me in, and I stroked my hands down his sides and back, each gesture inundated with all the love I could muster. “What can I do?”

“Shift and run with me. We can be life in the land.” He leaned down to brush his lips over my ear. “Show me your beautiful godbeast.”

Where his form took inspiration from mountain deer and elk, mine was a different sort of animal. While I expected a deer or horse as I’d seen him and my brother take the form of, I did not match my mate. He’d shown me what I looked like by sharing our mind. I was not the complementary doe to his buck, but rather goatlike, my form statuesque and firm, my wethers dusted in fine locks of white, meant to hide among snowy peaks. I was meant to climb the tallest peaks to live among the clouds in ways only the truly gifted flightless could.

Where Rayne bore markings of concentric circles, water sine waves in an endless pool, and Storm the facsimile of lightning, I could only watch in appreciation and swallow hard as Buck brought his godbeast out and rubbed his great antlers over the dead tree. Dead leaves rained down, gnarled leaves twirling.

In turn, I too focused on what I was inside, feeling for the power I always knew was there. I’d barely noticed the first time I’d shifted into my greater form, fighting with my brother. This time, I found the creature lurking, pulling him out in all his mighty grace to occupy my mind, body, and soul as I wished Buck would do with me. Unable to stifle the cry of attraction, I rubbed my head against his own, letting our horns rub, his widespread thinner antlers catching on the curl of my ram-like ridged ones. The contact sent a shiver up my spine and made my fur bristle.

With a rough snort of interest, Buck brushed against my side and groaned, nudging me to run.

My clawed hands and hooved legs grappled the floor, my six-legged beast more designed to climb than run. It felt good as we wound around his Lowlands, making our way toward theedge of what might have been a canyon at one time, a large rocky wall that yielded to my grip and paw.

From my human eye, looking at Buck was terrifying. The snarling form of his beast with the split of his elongated head, laden with sharp teeth, made me anxious. At times, he had more teeth, and in flickers, he had feathers and claws, wings that came in and out of focus in the flicker of light around him that shuddered, showing ghosts of his other forms. Though, from the eye of my godbeast, I saw a tall and proud creature, whose form had come from thousands of years of honing. His markings of cracked earth across his short coat moved and shifted like the stone he came from, and beneath it all, the power of blood spilled on an immovable altar.

We flanked and butted one another, nipping each other as we went by, tugging our tails and pawing at the earth.

When dusk arrived and we’d still not abandoned our chase, we found refuge in the hollow of an outcrop of rock, laden with rich moss, and let our feral minds dictate what we did.

I’d never admit it, but I let Buck take me that way. As a beast. It seemed right as we united under the moonlight, our every effort a praise to the goddess we followed.

And again, he took me when we left our godbeast forms, in several animal forms I’d never admit to coupling as. Granted, I’d have never agreed to it in my human form, but as we matched one another species for species, we coupled.

In the dark, we made our way home, shifting into our human forms despite the leaf litter in our hair and dirt on our bodies.

There, Buck let me fuck him, riding out my heat as we went round for round, mouths sucking marks on one another’s necks, backs arching, toes curling. I was starving for him as my ass leaked that slickness. Starving for his hands there, which he caved and gave me, sucking my cock and licking me from head to toe in ways that made him just as sweaty as I.

When we collapsed in exhaustion many hours later, we curled into one another like threads of twine, strengthening together, a rope of lust.

“Cliff?” Buck’s husky tones rasped in the night.

“Another dream?” I yawned and groaned as his fingers laced up the back of my head, through the fringe of my hair.

“Not this time.” He yawned and nuzzled into my neck, inhaling deeply. My sense of smell in my human form had evolved in a way, but not as much as Buck’s. He described me as sweetly earthy, like basalt stone baked in the sun, and the hint of thin air at the coldest peak of mountains.

To me? Buck smelled raw, masculine and feral. I caught notes of things at times, light sweat like a good trip to the gym, fresh and invigorating. Other times, I caught scents that brought images to my mind of small pink flowers on draping vines and crumpled squash flowers. Hints of sweet dahlia, though I didn’t know how I knew what that was, peaked between the cedar and musk notes of his soap.

“I’ve loved you since the moment I first laid eyes on you,” he said, brushing his fingers through my hair again, shifting his hips against me, his hot skin, as red as sunbaked clay, brushing over me beneath the woolen blanket of our cover. “But saying it sounds meaningless. Because you were made to be loved by me, made to love me.”

“Mmm,” I acknowledged. I’d thought of it, too. “If it means anything, I don’t feel forced into this. I genuinely enjoy coming home to you. But yeah, I love you. But more importantly, I like you.”

“I like you, too. You’re funny and conscious of the earth. You respect our mother, and you fight with your brother but still love him.” Buck rested his chin against me and took a long breath. “Stay with me for the rest of my eternity. Please, keep me grounded.”

“I promise.” I relaxed as his body went heavy against my own, sleep taking him by force as it always did, since that first night he’d discovered it. And every night since, his dreams grew better, leaving the nightmares of his past alone.

Chapter Twenty-One

Cliff

I woke in the late afternoon, refreshed from our time of lazy sex and passionate rutting. The soreness, not since our first few times, didn’t stick around. In fact, I felt rejuvenated. He was mine, and I his, our love as natural as could be.

I nudged him as I sat up, waiting for his sleepy green eyes to flicker open. I loved watching his dark lashes fan and flicker as he came to, but he didn’t this time. “Buck?”

His steady breath made his shoulders rise and fall, but he made no motion to move as I shook him with a warm chuckle. “C’mon. Let’s go clean up and get Jacque.”

No response.

---