Page 7 of Feral Moon Rising
Shaking myself out of the memory, I offered Gray a sharp nod. “I’ve got her. Don’t be long.”Or I might steal her away.I didn’t say that last, didn’t dare voice the desire that lay so deep within me and yet so close to the surface. I knew we shared her, that she called to both of us. Truth be told, she’d be safer between both of us than she ever would be with either of us alone. Our history proved that.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t go anywhere.” Gray’s gaze lingered on her when his touch dropped away. “We need answers.”
“So will she.”
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t answer me as he shifted, the force of the change throwing his face into a monstrous twist I could have interpreted as aggression had I been anyone else but his best friend, and the shifter who shared his mate. His lover.
Had I been anyone else.
Damn good thing I wasn’t. I didn’t watch Gray leave, already lost in stroking Lottie’s soft hair back from her face over the slope of her marred skin. Even though it wasn’t my mark and my saliva would do little to ease the ache, I licked her wound anyway, enjoying the way her breathing settled and how she moaned a little in her sleep.
Hell, with only the two of us in the room, I could pretend it was my name she whispered as I breathed in her scent and wished it was my mark she wore. Because I sure as fuck wouldn’t place mine on her until she begged me.
And she will beg.
Chapter Four
Gray
Istrode through whatfelt like enemy territory even though it wasn’t, my senses attuned to every shifter who thought they hid in the shadows. They failed. New York City wasn’t anywhere near our natural habitat, and panthers–pumas, jaguars—I never did give a fuck about wildcat labels—were never created with packs in mind. Or high density living in cities.
This alley that led to a small rabbit warren of a panther community was cloistered between a pair of buildings like a void between reality and the underground. It grew tighter with every step I took into its seething depths.
Seeing so many of my kind in one place when there were less than a hundred rumored in existence across the entire damn planet—due to a lack of exactly what rested in my bed tucked up with Blake—left me uncomfortable to the level of the prickly variety. The things cities do to our kind.
My senses were overloaded, overstimulated already with an excess of sound, lights, and electricity throwing off my judgment. And nothing in this world could convince me that the cement structures were anything more than giant cages keeping humans in. Somewhere along the line, shifters got caught up in the mess of it all, and here we were.
“I didn’t think you would come back.”
A voice I didn’t think I’d hear again called from the depths of the shadows. Lionel Griffin took responsibility for the New York City panther claw. That didn’t mean he spoke for all of them, however. Plenty of his group of shifters sidled along the shadows and maintained their distance in a not-so-respectful manner.
I huffed out a short breath, remembering our last conversation that ended in a poorly veiled threat that told me I shouldn’t bother crossing their territory again. Apparently, the head of this claw didn’t like competition. Not that I had any interest in politics, local or otherwise.
“Neither did I.” I slid my hands into my pockets and the masses crept an inch forward. A smile that bared my teeth crossed my face. “What do you know about a drug that brings on heat?”
“Heat?” He made several strange clicking sounds with his tongue and the creeping claws backed the fuck up in a hurry, though plenty mistimed their exit. That maneuver needs practice. Way too loud for my taste. Not that I’d be here long enough to care about his sloppy defensive tactics. “Are you trying to get pregnant, Alpha?” That last came out with a solid dose of sarcasm. “I can arrange for you to be fucked up, if that’s your goal.”
