Page 20 of Shaped to Be Yours

“Jason,” I whined, but he must have taken that forstop, because he tried to pull away. “No.” I tightened my grip on him and licked back into his mouth.

Jason kissed me back harder, pinned me to the tree firmer, and growled between our mouths with a stutter of his hips. “Mm… if we keep this up, you’re gonna see a lot more of me than you bargained for.”

“Aren’t you supposed to see me now?” I looked down, so Jason would look too when I started to undo my jeans. He loomed above me, almost pressing his forehead to the trunk of the tree, as he watched. “Or maybe… feel me?” I finished drawing down the zipper.

“But my claws—”

“I trust you.” I took Jason’s hands to bring them, pointed nails and all, to the space where my zipper parted. “We need practice, right? And if you’re worried, you can make the claws go away. I know you can. Youcancontrol yourself.”

His hands shook, but I didn’t hesitate from pressing the pads of his fingers to my stomach, even with them half-clawed. I held them there until I felt the presence of his nails recede, then I drew one hand, his right hand, down into the opening.

Jason’s head snapped to the side, wolf returning with a growl and flash of his eyes—and the return of claws that nicked me below my belly button.

“Ah!” I hissed. “What is it?”

Thunder rolled overheard, making Jason flinch. Courtesy of his Monster Match profile, I now knew that he didn't like storms, but he’d been startled before the thunder.

“Something’s in the woods.” His ears twitched, listening for more of whatever he had heard or sensed. When he looked at me, he sniffed, catching the scent of blood, I imagined, given it brought his eyes down to where he’d cut me.

“It’s okay.” I kept hold of Jason’s hands that he tried to lurch away. “It’sokay. No worse than the scratch of a tree branch. You don’t need to pull away if that happens. I can survive scrapes and bruises. It’s not going to change how I feel about you. You’re… you. No matter how different you can look sometimes.”

Jason was still back to full wolf mode, so tall, so feral looking, but he wasn’t feral. The same Jason was in his eyes, even if they were yellow. “Okay.” He nodded, as a harder rain began to fall, but not enough to drench us, since we were protected by the canopy of trees. “If it is ever too much,ever, tell me. Maybe instead of hands I should try using my tongue.”

He dropped, right to his fully furred knees, and swiped his definitely thicker and longer tongue up my cut.

A scream pierced the trees like the caw of a bird.

Both our heads snapped to the side. That wasn’t just a scream. I felt something now too. There was an energy in the woods, a pulse that hadn’t been there before, at least not this strong, potent enough that the hair on my arms and all of Jason’s fur stood on end.

Another crack of thunder rolled through, and though Jason flinched again, he stood, growling toward where we’d heard the scream.

“Go,” I said, doing up my jeans. “Someone might be in trouble. I’m right behind you.”

Jason met my gaze for one moment, two, and then bounded away as swiftly as when he’d disappeared from my sight the first time. It wasn’t easy to keep up when he was actually trying to outrun me. I did see a tail though, and Jason’s ass bent over while running on all fours was a sight I wouldn’t soon forget.

I pushed to go faster and catch up, made no easier by the increasing rain. I watched for signs of Jason’s path through the trees. He’d left plenty for me to follow between bent branches and the disruption of dirt from his paws. The scream hadn’t beentoo far away. We had to be close. One more turn and dart around a tree and—

Caution tape. I would have run right through it if it wasn’t already fluttering to the ground from Jason having beaten me there. The area the caution tape cordoned off was no larger than ten-by-ten. Jason stood in the center of it, where the last fizzles of light from something were dissipating like sparks from a malfunctioning machine—or a lightning strike. But we hadn’t seen any lightning touch down, and there was no machine, only empty air.

As soon as the sparks were gone, there was this sound like suction or a pop, and the strange feeling that had made my hair stand up was gone. The heavier rain and sounds of thunder were already fading, just a spurt of a spring storm.

There was no one else here, but judging by Jason’s sniffing, he could smell whoever should be here just without a new trail to follow. Most unsettling was the piece of cloth at his feet.

Snatching up the fabric with his claws was swift. The cloth had been fluttering too, disrupted from whatever had been here, just like the caution tape. If it had been any other fabric, I could have given a million guesses as to where it came from, but this was part of a shirt, red and black flannel with buttons on it. This was part of something someone had been wearing.

But whoever had screamed had vanished.

“Someone was here. They were righthere.” Jason turned to me, clutching the cloth.

“Did you see them?”

“No, but I saw a bunch of light that shouldn’t be able to hover in midair.”

I looked behind me again at the caution tape and knelt to lift one of its ends. The scientists I’d be working with told me they would explain the full scope of our project in person tomorrow,since it was classified and of, as they’d put it, “mysterious origin.”

The caution tape, besides the word CAUTION, also said:

PROPERTY OF ELDER RIDGE RESEARCH FACILITY

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