Page 5 of Until Forever Comes
But despite all that, I didn’t move when the not-Miguel-vampire roughly snatched the unconscious half-soul off the ground and moved away with the male in tow.
I didn’t move when the Miguel-vampire stood straight and tall and turned his sharp, piercing gaze on me.
And I didn’t move when, after the other vampire and the half-soul were gone, Miguel started walking—was he gliding?—toward me.
I looked at his feet, happy to see them touching the ground, and then I looked at his face, happy to see he’d focused completely on me. I sat up and tried to smile, which was difficult in wolf form and incredibly stupid in I-was-about-to-get-my-hide-tanned form. I was pretty sure my tail was moving from side to side. I refused to eventhinkof it as wagging.
“I expected you to return to your kind, wolf,” Miguel said, his voice, strong but quiet, coming from barely parted lips. “I came to check on yo—” He stopped mid-word, looking surprised by what he’d said. “I walked by that alley after sundown and you were gone, but I could smell another wolf. A female who smelled like you, but… didn’t. I thought she’d come to collect you.”
Vampires could scent? That was something I hadn’t known. And for him to have distinguished the connection in scents between me and Crissy meant the bloodsuckers’ sense of smell was just as sophisticated as ours.
“Confused you, did I?” Miguel chuckled and grinned, looking pleased with himself.
I wondered if he could read my mind, if that was another vampire trait of which I’d been unaware. But then I realized my head was tipped to the side, my brow furrowed, and I reckoned that being able to read body language would have been enough for him to sense what I was thinking.
Of course, to be able read my body language, the vampire had to be looking at my body. I straightened my posture at the realization. And I felt something else getting straighter too, or rather it was getting harder, which meant it wasn’t really straight. It curved and veered right, actually.
“Well, you confuse me too, wolf.” Miguel’s voice was suddenly huskier and he was near about close enough to touch. “You smell… different.” He took in a deep breath through his nose and shuddered. “You smellgood.”
I got up and took the two steps necessary to reach him, then stretched my neck up and nudged his crotch with my snout. He made a noise that was part laugh, part groan. Then he put his hand on my head and pushed me back.
“Doesn’t matter how good you smell. I’m not sticking my dick in an animal.Shift.” He palmed his groin, and I saw what looked to be a nice-sized bulge filling his jeans. “I’ve wanted to fuck your skinny ass since you came in your pants last night.”
Fuck my ass? I froze, an image of what he described in my mind: me in human form, naked on all fours, him behind me, pushing into my body. I’d seen pack members tie in wolf form. I’d even managed to spy some of them nude and writhing together in human form on the forest floor, under the moon. But I’d never seen two males together.
Male shifters tied with female shifters. It was the only way for a female to release her wolf and the only way for a male to maintain his humanity. Each shifter’s soul shared two forms, two bodies: a wolf and a human. Females’ souls favored the human form, while males’ souls favored the wolf. In order for a female to shift, she had to accept a tie from a male wolf. For that reason, females shifted later in life. Males, on other hand, shifted as cubs, but their connection to their human half weakened as they aged, and they needed to tie with a female shifter in order to hang on to their humanity.
I hadn’t expected to tie with anybody, ever. I mean, I hadn’t ever been able to shift into my wolf, so how could I help a female connect with hers? Plus, I hadn’t figured on living much into my adulthood. My family had endured looks of pity and disgust from pack members as a result of my inability to shift. Though they’d tried to shield me, I’d heard the words: sick, wrong, abomination, better off dead.
Although I was now able to shift, my newly developing attraction to a male vampire was sure to make the comments about me worse. The whole basis of shifter society was rooted in the concept of the connection between males and females, in the need to tie. So there was no question in my mind about how the elders would react if they knew what I was feeling: they’d say two males together was wrong. They’d say being with a vampire was worse. My parents would probably say it too. Maybe even my sister.
But it didn’t feel wrong. Not in my head, not in my heart, and not in the rest of my body. In fact, nothing had ever felt more right than being in Miguel’s presence or thinking about being held in his strong arms. So I closed my eyes and called to my human.
“There you are,” Miguel said, caressing my head with his big cool hand. I blinked up at him. “You’re shivering. Do you have clothes, young one, or did you come out here in your wolf form?”
I frowned as I rose to my feet. “I’m twenty. I’m not young.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m a man.”
One side of Miguel’s mouth turned up and he twitched his lips in amusement. It was the first smile I’d seen on his face that didn’t look predatory. “Twenty, you say? I’m more than four hundred years old.” He dropped his gaze between my legs and then the increasingly familiar and arousing wicked grin spread across his face. “But you are most definitely a man. Who would’ve thought such a small body would have such a big dick?”
I blushed at his crude words and instinctively tried to cover myself with my hands.
Miguel groaned and then licked my cheek, from my jaw to just under my eye, over and over again. It was such a canine gesture that it took me off guard.
“I can see your blood just beneath your skin.” His voice was husky and low. “I can hear it.” He licked his lips.
“Hear it?” I whispered.
“Your blood. I can hear your blood thrumming through your veins. It’s so loud.” He dipped his head and grazed my neck with an open mouth. “Never heard it so strongly before. It’s like it’s calling to me.”
With no thought toward self-preservation, I cocked my head and offered my neck to the bloodsucker, whom I had just witnessed all but killing a man. And that was after he’d drained two other half-souls who were, at that moment, still lying on the ground not more than fifteen feet from us.
“I can’t drink you, wolf,” he said regretfully as he continued mouthing my skin. “Your kind is poison, not food.”
I knew that, of course. The fact that vampires were allergic to shifter blood was one of our strengths during battle. Without the ability to suck us dry, they lost their primary tool and we were more evenly matched.
Despite that, I needed Miguel to feed from me. Not because I wanted to hurt him, but because I could feel what he described too. Not thirty minutes had passed since I’d crouched on the ground, bleeding, but already my body felt too full, my skin too tight. It was a familiar feeling, one I’d lived with for as long as I could remember. But only in that moment did I recognize it for what it was: too much blood in my body, in my veins, in my heart. I needed release, and I knew instinctively that Miguel could give it to me.
“So warm,” he said as he licked and kissed the pulsing veins in my neck. I trembled and he pulled his face back, pursing his lips in disapproval. “And we need to make sure you stay that way. You need to shift back or we need to find you something to wear, and then I’ll walk you out of town.”
