Page 30 of Shifter's Secret Baby

Avalon chortled jovially. “Flattery truly will get you everywhere, you sexy beast,” he sniffled. “All right, send me whatever details you can find, and I’ll see what ancestors I can locate. I’ve missed you.”

I didn’t return the sentiment, my patience with most Originals far extended, as it were.

“Talk to you soon,” I replied instead, disconnecting the call.

He would be properly compensated for his time and effort. He didn’t need my affections to do the job.

Leaving the suite, I eyed Briar’s closed doors at the far end of the hall, but I didn’t dare venture toward them. The best thing I could do now was give her—and myself—space. At least until there was some kind of resolution found.

I wandered down the stairs, toward the back of the house. I needed some fresh air. The house, big as it was, was suffocating me.

But as I pushed open the frosted doors leading to the backyard, I stopped dead in my tracks to see Briar sauntering toward me in a two-piece bathing suit, both garments slightly too large for her small frame.

Paralyzed, I stared at her nipples poking through the drenched yellow fabric, her dark curls slick around her shoulders as she neared me.

“I couldn’t find a towel,” she said, heat tingling her cheeks scarlet as my eyes raked over every line of her body.

I had envisioned her like this, half-naked and writhing beneath me. Wet, moaning…

“You’re staying,” I managed to say through my lust.

It wasn’t me speaking. I wasn’t there anymore. Something else had taken me over.

She sighed and cocked her head back to look at me. “Unless you’ve changed your mind. I… I don’t really want to go home and look at my father now,” she admitted. “What would I even say to him?”

She trailed off and shrugged, biting on her lower lip as she toed the ground in front of her. “I don’t have much experience in this kind of thing…”

Raising her head, she met my eyes. “But if you want me, you can have me, Ash. It doesn’t have to mean anything or be a commitment—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish her clearly rehearsed speech before I strode toward her and picked her up, slinging her over my shoulder.

Gasping, she clung to my shirt, but I wasn’t going to let her go. She had given me permission to take her, and I wasn’t about to give that up for anything. Tonight, Briar Madison was mine.

Chapter12

Briar

Ash held me just as he had when he’d saved me from the jail cell, my torso pinned to his broad shoulder, legs clamped in his strong hold as my hands splayed helplessly down his back. I curled my fingers into his shirt, clinging to him as if he might drop me, but I had absolutely no fear that he would harm me. I felt nothing but wave upon wave of ethereal hotness flooding me from head to toe.

There was a back stairwell I hadn’t noticed on the way to the pool earlier, the hall leading almost directly to his suite.

He kicked the door closed with a bang, laying my dripping body onto the huge bed, frame already writhing even when he withdrew to look at me. His stare melted into me, touching every part of me, penetrating every pore of my form, fusing bursts through all my crevices.

It was only then that I realized that the too-big bathing suit that Rachel had brought among that bag of clothing had all but fallen off, exposing my prickled skin to his roaming gaze.

“You’re exactly how I imagined you,” he rasped, dropping a knee over the edge of the bed.

I’d never seen a mattress that size before. It was huge, like a double king, meant for two naked bodies rolling over and over without the danger of ever falling.

Extending my fingers, I wriggled them toward him desperately, wanting to touch his fiery skin, but he just stood there, looking at me.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Why do you have to be so beautiful?”

He almost sounded pained when he said that, like it hurt him that he wanted me.

“Come here,” I begged him, sitting up to pull him against me.

He didn’t resist, the weight of him stealing my breath. It was what I’d wanted, what I’d craved from the first second I’d come into contact with him. This was more than an attraction.

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