Page 14 of Shift of Destiny
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Chance knew his plan to talk to Moira about her magic and the people in Kotoyeesinay was doomed from the moment he saw Moira realize they’d be alone together for the evening. The resulting gleam in her eye made his beast thrum with pleasure and his body redirect most of the blood his brain needed for thinking to his groin.
He temporarily distracted them both by ordering food, and making a list of the supplies they’d need for the renovation while they ate dinner in the little office area. Iolo told them to make use of the accounts he had with practically every other business in town, but neither Chance nor Moira wanted to buy anything major without Iolo approving it first.
Moira grabbed her backpack. “I want to change into a T-shirt. Let’s go up and figure out logistics.” Her swaying rear mesmerized him as she climbed the stairs, so much so that he nearly ran into her when she stopped at the top.
“Oh, shoot,” she said. “I forgot to ask Mr. Maxen what to do about all his stuff. It’ll get filthy if we don’t move it, or at least cover it.”
“Shepherd is using his big truck to bring the new header beam for the ceiling, and I asked him to bring some extra tarps. He’ll be here about eight.” To keep from touching her, he busied himself by taking off his work vest and hanging it on the newel post. “Meanwhile, we can corral everything in the southeast bedroom.”
“Sounds good.” She gave him a sassy smile as she fished a faded iron-gray T-shirt out of her backpack. “I can add ‘herding furniture’ to my résumé.”
As they carried dressers, trunks, small tables, and chairs, they talked about what to do next. The heating and air-conditioning systems were both good, so all they’d need was new ducting and improved insulation all around to solve the temperature problem. Heated baseboards and upgrading the windowpanes would help in deep winter. The new floorplan would also reinstate the load-bearing wall the previous owner had compromised by combining bedrooms.
They decided to put any reusable wood in with the furniture. She had a notion much like his about creating a temporary chute out of tarp and a rough frame so they could simply drop the discards from the window of the northeast bedroom and have it land in the roll-off.
After forty minutes, the furniture and boxes were stacked, and they were both sweating rivers in the second-floor’s stuffy heat.
Night had fallen outside, but the waning moon would give Chance plenty of light to see by, if he borrowed his beast’s vision without actually shifting. Selective shifting was an alpha trick his magical cougar mother had taught him. She could have been alpha of the cougar pride, but she chose happiness with her mate and child instead of the difficult task of dragging the hidebound, chauvinistic pride into the twenty-first century. The local wolf pack, ancient enemy of the pride, was no more enlightened and even more bigoted, which was why his father resigned his hard-earned beta position to make a home with his mate. Chance had grown up in the security of their deep and abiding love. He wanted that for his own children. For himself.
Moira fanned herself by pulling the hem of her T-shirt up and down, giving him tantalizing glimpses of her rounded but muscled stomach. “Do you think we could open the windows for some ventilation?”
“Good idea.” Her natural scent, magnified by her perspiration, was making it hard to think of anything beyond kissing her all over.
He turned to the window, flipped the levers, and pulled up on the sash. It stuck for a moment, then opened. He felt a flare of the building’s wards through his fingers and hoped he hadn’t just sent a silent alarm to the sheriff’s station or the ogre-run security company. Iolo had cleverly keyed the building’s wards to both Chance and Moira, under the guise of teaching them to use the mundane security system, but for obvious reasons, hadn’t explained them.
He turned back to her just in time to catch her wince.
“Damn,” she muttered, rubbing her temple. “I thought I was getting better.”
He needed to tell her what was happening, but the words stuck in this throat. He wasn’t usually a coward, but he could lose his mate if he handled it wrong. He pulled out one of the chairs and pointed to it. “Rest here a minute.” She sat and closed her eyes, toeing off her loosely tied sneakers and her socks.
He studied her a long moment to make sure she was okay, then turned off the overhead light and left her there so he could go open the rest of the second-floor windows. As he forced open one paint-glued window after another, he racked his brain for how to start a conversation he knew wasn’t going to go well. For all her ready sense of humor and imagination, underneath, she was inherently practical and conditioned to be deeply skeptical. He’d bet that as a child, she’d been told to quit dreaming, quit making things up, quit lying about things only she could see. She’d need proof, and despite his potential gifts, the only magic he could reliably work involved shifting into an eight-hundred-pound beast that wanted to groom her and get a good ear rub in return. But he had to do something, because she was suffering needlessly. He stepped into the darkened bedroom.
“Moira, we need to talk…” His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. She stood by the window, smiling, eyes closed, lit only by moonlight. Her T-shirt trailed on the floor from her hand, leaving her wearing only her thin bra and jeans.
She turned to look at him, making no move to cover herself. Her slow smile said she enjoyed the stunning effect she had on him. Her curling finger invited him in.
His beast surged. He knew his eyes probably flashed amber as he stripped off his T-shirt and took three long strides to close the distance between them. He crushed her to his chest, craving the feel of her skin on his. He plundered her mouth, reveling in the sexiest woman he’d ever tasted. She gave as good as she got, voicing a low moan that almost sounded like a purr. He ground himself into her, drowning the pain of the suddenly too-tight pants with the pleasure of feeling her on him. He came up for air, only to have the scent of her blossoming desire drive him mad.
He slid a hand up her side to cup her lush, pillowy breast and brush his thumb over her stiff nipple. Even through the fabric of her bra, the tip was diamond hard. She arched into his touch. “Yes, Chance, yes.”
Jealous of the moonlight and whoever else might be flying by, he pivoted her in a wide circle that took them near the newel post of the four-post bed. She glanced at the bed, which they’d covered with stacks of boxes and plastic tubs. “Bad planning. We’ll have to improvise.”
She pushed his chest, and he reluctantly moved back, closing his eyes in case his beast was visible. He opened them immediately when she took his hand and placed it on her bare breast, her bra nowhere to be seen. “Kiss me here.”
She raised her hands to grab onto the newel post above her, lifting her luscious breasts for him to feast on. He supported her back with one arm and enveloped her whole dark areola with his hungry mouth, sliding his tongue back and forth across her turgid nipple. Her little gasps of pleasure spurred him to cover her other breast with his free hand and scissor its nipple between his fingers. Her scent sharpened with desire as her hips began rhythmically grinding forward.
“Touch me,” she breathed. “I burn for you.”
His mating pheromones must already be affecting her. One more confirmation that he was hers, and she was his. His beast lunged forward again, and he closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to bury his aching, surging dick into the warm, moist heat of her core, and bathe her womb with life-giving seed, mating her for life, but he couldn’t do it. Not until she knew what it meant. Not until he knew she would stay. But he could ease her immediate need, and his.
He dropped to his knees in front of her and swiftly unbuttoned her jeans, then wrenched them and her underwear to her knees. Almost before she kicked them off, he buried his face in her gloriously natural mons and inhaled the full scent of her, making him drunk on her pleasure. He used his shifter strength to lift her hips to his mouth and slid his tongue downward, brushing past her clit to lap up the wetness he found at her entrance. He circled back up to her hardened clit and flicked it several times with the tip of his tongue, backing off at the first warning spasm. He glanced up to see her head thrown back as she rolled one of her own nipples with her fingers. He repeated it twice more, wanting her first orgasm from him to be as good as he could make it, without the teasing becoming torture. The third time, he stayed at her clit and covered it with his tongue while sliding a finger into her entrance and up inside her slick walls. A couple more thrusts and flicks of his tongue sent her up and over the edge, clit and core spasming hard and strong for him. He hung on for the ride until she came down, dimly aware that she’d been murmuring his name the whole time.
He’d had sex with other women before, and made sure they enjoyed it, but nothing in the world compared to the soul-deep satisfaction of pleasuring his mate.
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