Page 6 of Shaped to Be Yours

“You’ve met my mom, like, five times already.”

“You know what I mean.”

Ricky was going to be staying with us. The research team would have given him housing, a room at the facility, an apartment or long-term hotel stay, something, but he’d chosen to stay with me and Mom. That definitely felt like a boyfriend thing to do.

The train wasn’t very full, but even if it had been packed, I wouldn’t have cared if anyone saw me reach for Ricky’s smooth cheek and pull his lips to mine. He tasted like honey-walnut cream cheese from the bagels we’d grabbed that morning. I could taste that and the underlying rawness ofhim.

Praise be to enhanced senses.

Ricky smelled like sweat from sleeping on the train, but clean sweat, mixed with a hint of musk and earthy cologne. The slide of his tongue felt rougher than how I remembered it felt to kiss someone before I became a monster. In a good way! Like I could tell the difference between our taste buds colliding. The warmth of his mouth made me shiver, and I moved my hand to his thigh.

“Ah!” Ricky snapped away from me.

“Are you okay?” I looked first at him sucking his bottom lip, but I didn’t need to see the drop of blood to smell it. Then I looked down, and my hand on his thigh had claws, with a bit offur sprouting, and the points of my nails were digging into his jeans.

I yanked my hand away and shook it until it turned human again. I tongued my teeth, feeling the fangs that I had to will to be blunt. Benormal.

“Sorry,” I said, when I was no longer at threat of revealing myself to the whole train.

I hadn’t been with anyone since my species changed. Kissing Ricky didn’t always trigger mynotwolf to come out, but the more aroused I was, the more often it happened. Which fucking sucked! We’d never get past first base if I couldn’t control myself. I had to control myself!

Ricky’s hand reached for mine and placed it back on his thigh.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“It’s really not. But I’m working on it. I promise. I even have that promise prepared.”

Ricky blinked at me, watching as I pulled out the slip of paper from my pocket that I’d been waiting for the right moment to give him. I passed it to him, and the moment he opened it, he laughed. “Oh my god! You actually did it?”

The night I’d confessed my feelings to him in the woods in Edgewind, we’d eventually gone somewhere less spooky to talk. I’d asked him to tell me if there was anything I could do to prove I wasn’t the asshole I’d been acting like so much of the time, and he’d joked:

“Maybe write ‘I will not be a dick’ a hundred times, and I’ll believe it.” He’d taken my hand as he said that though, like he was saying he already knew I was more than that.

“Although, maybe I should change ‘dick’ to ‘prick’ since I keepprickingyou, huh?” I joked. “Also, that’s only twenty-five times. A hundred is a lot to fit on one page. But I’ll work my way up to it.”

Ricky clutched the note like a love letter, which was the point. I could be romantic, even if in a silly way.

All I wanted then was to steal another kiss, but I felt the stir of wanting to transform and had to tamp the urge down. Ricky must have noticed me cringe, because he ran his thumb along the back of my hand, almost causing me to sprout fur just from that.

“Jason, itisokay. You’re still new to being, um…”

“Whatever I am?”

“Yeah. You know—”

“The train will be arriving in Elder Ridge in five minutes,” a voice interrupted over the intercom. “If this is your final destination, please gather your belongings and prepare to disembark. I repeat: the train…”

We were almost there, and I turned my head to look out the window at the familiar landscape of Midwestern farmland interspersed with trees, not too different from outside Edgewind. “Home sweet home,” I said.

Ricky patted my hand, bringing my attention back to him. At least my boner had gone away, but the little squeeze he offered, with my hand onhisthigh, made my cock twitch again and my chest ache with want to kiss him, to touch him, to hold him.

Withoutdrawing blood.

The blood was already gone when I looked, sucked away by Ricky’s tongue, but I leaned forward to lick the scratch anyway, tasting its tang. I guess not being a werewolf was a good thing, given that wasn’t the first time I’d broken his skin. At least it was never more than a prick, but I worried sometimes, no matter how forgiving he was, that my monster side would go too far.

Ricky chased my tongue for another kiss. I tried to enjoy it—Ididenjoy it—but I also had to concentrate on quelling the beast.

This time, I succeeded.

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