Page 11 of Mortal Shift
“Yeah, funny.” Then he canted his head and his brow furrowed. “Wait, no-one’s told you?”
I ground my teeth together. “Would I be asking if they had?”
He pressed his lips together in a way that inexplicably made me think about kissing them, and set my heart racing again, dammit—did anything about this infuriating man not make me react that way?—and then his mouth curve into a smile and he rose to his feet and shucked his trousers.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I protested, somewhat belatedly, and somewhat halfheartedly. Fuck’s sake. Stupid hormones. Still…
“Don’t get too excited,” he said, his scathing tone cutting right to my core and somehowstillexciting me. “I just don’t want to shred them when I shift.”
“Shift?”
Amusement danced in his dark eyes. “Oh, am I going to enjoy this.”
He shed the rest of his clothes and I didn’t bother to protest, because I was curious. About what he meant. Not what he looked like naked. Definitely about the shifting thing. Mostly.
I caught only a glimpse of his breath-taking nudity before he crouched on the floor, and gave me one last wicked grin. Then he threw his head back, and…
My mind couldn’t quite process what it was seeing. His face contorted in what looked like pain, just for a second, and then itkeptcontorting. Fur started to sprout from him, and an audible crack drew my attention to his arms, which were changing shape, and elongating. They spouted fur, too, and so did every inch of exposed skin as his body kept on contorting. I jerked my gaze back to his face…but I wasn’t looking at a man anymore.
I was looking at a wolf.
And it was fuckinghuge.
I’d never seen a wolf before, but I’d seen enough documentaries to know that the beast’s shoulders should not reach mine. And should its shoulders have been that broad, that thickly muscled? And…
…And what the fuck was I doing, calmly analyzing this wolfzilla when it probably wanted toeatme? I scrambled back, my mouth closing around a gasp, and for a moment I considered bolting for the door.
Then something in the beast’s eyes caught my notice. No, not something, someone.I cocked my head, staring at him. It wasn’t feral madness I saw in those eyes. It was Cole. Whatever the hell had happened to his body, it was still his mind in there, and I could practically see him waiting for me to run from the room, screaming.
Well, to hell with that. I fixed him with the least I’m-about-to-shit-myself-and-hide expression I could muster.
“My, my, grandma. What big teeth you have.”
He padded one step closer, canting his head and inhaling deeply, until I started to doubt if it reallywashim inside that wolf, and then he huffed out a breath, shook out his fur, and with a snarl and a cracking of bones, returned to his human form.
…His very naked, very distracting human form. Crouched at my feet. I could feel the heat pulsing from him, dominating the air around me, calling to me to reach down to him and—
I took a quick step back and jerked my eyes away, then spun to face my bed. I busied myself unzipping my bag.
“Never turn your back on a predator, princess,” he said, his breath right in my ear. I yelped and spun around, and found his face only an inch from mine. I brought my hands up and slapped him on his bare chest, hard.
And somehow found myself unable to pull my hands from him.
“See something you want?” he purred, his voice low and husky. My mouth opened a fraction, inhaling his delicious scent, and then I snapped back to my senses. What the fuck was I doing?
I yanked my hands back from his chest like it had burned me…and not in the delicious and damned annoying way he’d lit a fire between my legs, and he rumbled a throaty chuckle.
“Trust me, there’snothingthere I want,” I snapped. His face darkened, and between one blink and the next, he thrust his hand out and tangled it in my hair, just enough that I could feel the pressure.
“Trustme,” he said, canting his head and roving his eyes over me in a way that made me feel more naked than actually being naked, “When I want you, you’ll come running.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, pulling back, and gasped in pain as the movement yanked on my hair. “Ow, get off!”
His eyes glittered with cold amusement. “Ask me nicely.”
“Get the fuck off me,now.”
He tutted. “That’s not very nice.”
