Page 15 of Destined Predator
Rhett sat, and Casey did too, on his haunches, all four paws on the ground. Memory was selective—Rhett had thought coywolf-Casey was mostly black, like Casey’s hair, but now he marveled at the subtle streaks of silver and brown in his coat, how they rippled together when Rhett drew his hand down Casey’s sleek strength.
Casey inched a little nearer, tipping up his head, and Rhett chuckled, scratching behind his ears and under his chin. Casey gave a shiver and panted, and Rhett thought it was from pleasure. “Hey, don’t go humping my leg none,” he warned, then felt silly—could shifters understand human speech, in their animal forms?
He realized he was babbling to cover the fact that he didn’t want to yank his hand away. “You get weird, you tell me,” he muttered, then caught himself. “And if I get weird, I’ll tell you.” The promise felt simple and right between them.
Well, it seemed so, if Casey opening his muzzle and making a yip noise was him laughing.
“Don’t laugh so much you pee on me, neither,” Rhett ordered.
The coywolf’s ears pricked up, then twitched in and out, like they were antennae, as though he was listening to something Rhett couldn’t hear. There wasn’t anything to hear, out here at the end of Longview. Nothing else to see either, except for the Miller house, the only one on this lane. Whatever it was Caseyhad detected didn’t seem a problem or even worth bothering over, though.
Rhett smoothed a fingertip over where eyebrows would have been, enjoying the silkiness, then scratched his fingernail gently between Casey’s eyes, down his face.
“I’m not gonna feel your nose. Or clip your claws for you,” he told Casey.
Casey shook his head and shoulders. Was that how coywolf shifters laughed? Rhett suddenly wondered if Casey ever got touched like this, while he was in his animal form. All animals needed bodily contact, like stroking or scratching. It would be a crying shame if Casey didn’t get it.He lives in a pack probably for that reason, Rhett told himself.They probably have a shoulder scratch or back scratch circle or line.But did shifters, who were half-human, needhumancontact while they were in their animal forms? Rhett didn’t suppose it was a subject Animal Planet would cover.
When Casey lowered his head and stared into Rhett’s eyes with his unblinking yellow ones, Rhett stared back. For a minute, they simply looked at each other, and Rhett had never experienced such a connection before. Something low and sure hummed through his chest, not magic—he wouldn’t call it that—but recognition. If fear had teeth, this wasn’t it. This had a spine and a steady heartbeat. Warmth wrapped around him. No, more like infusedinhim. Whatever, he felt…settled, was as near as he could get to hanging a name on. It was the opposite to that weakness and aching that had passed though him when he’d left the bar last night. When he’d leftCasey.
Casey got to his paws and stood back a little. To shift, Rhett knew, and before he’d asked himself how he knew that, Casey was human again, shaking his messy chin-length hair back from his face, and tucking behind his ear the lock that fell over his left eye.
“So. You touched your first coywolf.” His voice, huskier, landed on Rhett like a caress, not the lash it usually was.
Rhett nodded, rubbing his thumb over fingertips that remembered the feel of Casey’s thick fur. He couldn’t take his eyes from Casey.
“Bet you can guess the follow-up question,” Casey continued.
Rhett was on his feet—when had he stood? “No,” he said, and Casey tilted his head back. “I mean no I haven’t, but…”Say it.Rhett almost stumbled—the voice in his head sounded more like Casey than his own inner voice. “I’d…I’d like to touch this one.” The words left his mouth rough, like he’d dragged them over gravel. Truth tasted that way, apparently—hard to get out, impossible to take back.
His movement as slow as his smile, Casey spread his arms wide, as if Rhett would be patting him down. Maybe he would, but first he just stared. Casey wasn’t as thick-muscled as Rhett, but he was as tall, over six feet, and built in all the right places. And a good place to start was at Casey’s chest, which was nicely hairy, not a mat like his own. Up close, the swagger fell away and left skin and heat and pulse. Every time Rhett skimmed a new line of muscle, Casey’s breath hitched, a tiny unguarded surrender that punched straight through Rhett’s ribs. Casey was lean, yeah, but strong, Rhett knew, and found, tracing his biceps, with their tattoos. He’d ask Casey about them next time, although he could guess what the two animal figures represented.
Because Casey still had his arms out, Rhett felt his armpits, curious if the hair there was silky. It was.
Casey laughed. “Tickles.” He lowered his arms.
Rhett reversed direction and headed back to the torso, and Casey’s nipples. He wasn’t a stranger to the male form—he’d seen plenty on his favorite porn sites. But rubbing the pads of his thumbs over nubs of flesh than were flatter than a woman’s,then spanning his hands across a cobbled stomach, and tracing its well-defined grooves? Nothing came close.
He followed the treasure trail of hair down past the well-defined V muscle…to where Casey’s cock was filling and growing. And growing. And thickening. And growing some more. Rhett raised round eyes to Casey’s.
“You’re good for my ego, cowboy,” Casey commented, getting his hand to his dick and giving it a lazy pull. “And quit overthinking, huh?”
Rhett nodded and returned to what he’d been doing. He still had curiosity to satisfy, about the feel of Casey’s pubic hair, and how soft the insides of his thighs might be. And discovering how the skin there—as peach-velvet as he’d imagined—rippled in tiny tremors when Rhett stroked them, getting close to Casey’s balls but not touching them.
“Want me to turn around?” Casey asked, with the mockery still gone from his tone.
Rhett shook his head.
“So what do you want?” Casey widened his stance a little.
Rhett licked his lips, and Casey followed the movement of his tongue. “Say it,” he told Rhett. “You might just get it.”
“I want you…” He could say it, couldn’t he?
“Rhett. You gotta say what you need. My thinking is you need to receive for once. You’re always the one to give of yourself and it’s time you took something back.”
Is it that simple?Rhett found his head going back and forth in a nod. “Yeah. You’re right. About what I want, I mean—I want you to touch me, too.”
“Oh, I intend to, babe.” Casey cast a look around. “This way.” He bent to gather his clothes, and Rhett admired the flex of his body, then couldn’t help a rueful grin when Casey turned and caught him watching. He followed Casey to a room beyond the half-wall. It was more private than the front of the house, heldfolded cloths and tarpaulins and its floor was more than just a bare concrete slab.
