Page 19 of Beware of Hodags

RACHEL

I’m not sure if it’s very late or very early when I wake up to fingers teasing between my legs. Warm breath heats my neck, and Shepard’s words tickle behind my ear. “You awake?”

“I am now. I’m being molested by a hodag.”

“Yes, you are,” he agrees. “Want me to stop?”

“No.”

“Good.” He rolls on top of me.

The next time I wake up, it’s still dark.

I think I snap into consciousness not only because my phone’s alarm starts a goshawful peal—it’s a tornado alarm melded with a firetruck horn—but because it startles Shepard awake and his instinctive reaction to this attack is to tighten his arms around me until I nearly pop.

“It’s okay!” I gasp. “It’s just my alarm.”

He exhales in a relieved rush, his breath warm.

“Too fruggin’ early,” he mumbles into my neck.

His beard manages to feel both pleasant and unsettling.

It’s sort of like a talking cat is hugging itself to me.

As he regains consciousness enough for his body to catch up and believe that the noise isn’t from a clanging siren alerting us to a natural disaster or air-strike, his grip on me relaxes.

Sucking in a breath, I hug him back. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Stay,” he says, into my shoulder. He’s nuzzling me, traveling his lips and nose and mustache over my skin.

I manage to reach for my phone and swipe away the alarm. “Gotta go to work. ”

He stops nosing me. “With a Lycosid?”

I close my arms around his back. “I’m impressed you managed to sneer when your face is buried in my hair.”

“I’d rather have my face buried somewhere else,” he says sullenly.

I pet his back. “Tempting. But I really do need to get up and get ready.”

His growl is bad tempered.

I poke him in the ribs. “Let me up, you oaf.”

He huffs a laugh and loosens his hold enough that I can wriggle out of his arms.

“You can have the shower first,” I tell him, tugging down on the hem of my T-shirt. “I’ve got to go through my clothes and find an outfit.”

I’m barely finished picking out what I’ll wear when he calls, “Shower’s all yours.”

I leave my outfit on the bed and head for the three-sink vanity where there is a stack of towels.

I reach around Shepard—who’s wearing sweatpants and a beautifully bare chest—to take one from the little cubby when I see that he’s hauled a shaving kit out from somewhere and he’s spreading it out on the vanity’s counter.

“What are you doing?” I ask in alarm.

He meets my gaze in the mirror, his eyes baffled. “What does it look like?” He holds up an electric clipper.

“You’re not shaving your beard off, are you?” I ask in horror.

He blinks, nonplussed. “I guess I don’t have to…” he offers.

“Definitely don’t!”

“Okaaay,” Shepard says warily, lowering the hand holding the trimmer. “Am I allowed to trim it?”

I wring the towel I’m clutching. “How much?”

He lets out a huff of surprise. His gaze drops even as his eyebrows go up. “Well if you like it that much— ”

“I do.”

His mustache rises on one side. His eyes are back on my face, amusement clear in his voice as he says, “Sounds like I’m just styling it then.” He quirks a wry eyebrow. “That okay with you?”

I sniff daintily. “I’ll allow it.”

He chuckles, and I scurry to the quarter-bath for my shower.

When I emerge, clad only in a towel, Shepard pounces on me and drags his freshly trimmed, beautifully shaped beard up and down my neck.

At first I stand there because I’m so surprised.

But when I try to push him off, he only tightens his arms around me, rubbing his beard on me like an animal, making me giggle and squeal.

The sharply trimmed hairs are feather soft.

“Stay with me,” he growls.

“No!” I can’t. As much as I’d love to lounge around with Shepard, I have a new job and Mirk is expecting me.

This time Shepard’s growl makes my toes curl. “Wrong answer,” he says menacingly. And he sets in again, scrubbing me with his beard. I shove and squeak and try to escape him, but it’s no use.

“Is this some kind of hodag mating display?” I ask, breathless with laughter.

He pauses. “Is it working?” He drops an aggressive kiss against my skin.

I laugh harder. I redouble my efforts to free myself but he catches me by the towel and his meaning is clear: I’m free to pull away—but he’s keeping my towel.

I stay where I am, letting him use my neck as his beard’s scratching post. It’s not long before he gets distracted giving me more kisses. And then, like yesterday, he opens his mouth over the side of my neck and applies his teeth. Unlike yesterday, he does it hard.

Too hard.

“Hey!” I protest .

Shepard releases my skin at once, and gives it a lick. An almost regretful one. The next kiss he drops on the spot definitely is. “Sorry. Did it hurt?”

I’m frozen in his arms. “Did you just… give me a love bite?” I ask in disbelief.

Now he pulls back guiltily. “I gave you a little more than that.”

I push away from him, and this time he lets me go.

I hurry to the mirror. Staring agog at my reflection, I cover his teeth prints with my hand like that will make them go away.

It doesn’t. “You gave me a hickey!” I cry.

“On my first day at my new job?” I look back at him, horrified.

“Oh my gosh, you monster!” My eyes fly back to my reflection, at the rapidly forming bruise.

“You’re lucky I can shift and make this disappear, mister. ”

Coming up behind me, Shepard places his hand over mine, over the hickey. “I’m sorry,” he says again, meeting my eyes in the mirror, his remorseful. “I didn’t mean to get so carried away.”

I sigh. “It’s alright. Like I said, I’ll change quick and my neck will be as good as new.”

Shepard’s Adam’s apple bobs. “No, it won’t.”

I lick my lips. “What do you mean?”

“That’s more than a hickey,” he says, tipping his head to indicate the spot. “It’s a hodag mark.” At my speaking look, he sighs and drops his head. “I claimed you.”

“This is… this is a claiming mark?” I ask, my jaw hanging open. I turn around to face him. He doesn’t back up so my hand, which is gripping my towel in front of my chest, is squished over his heart. I can feel it beating faster than normal. But even if I couldn’t, I can hear it.

Which is fair. Because a claiming mark is no small thing. My kind don’t have them but each shifter type has its own quirks—and apparently hodags have the claiming mark quirk. “This is permanent?”

Nostrils flaring, Shepard nods. He’s searching my gaze, looking uneasy. “The tooth marks and the… bruising,” he says with a wince, sh eepish and regretful. “You can change and humans won’t be able to see it anymore. Most other shifters won’t either, unf—” he swiftly bites off the rest of the word.

I tilt my head. “You were going to say ‘unfortunately?’”

His tongue spears his upper lip, then he dips his chin once in a nod. His eyes are glued to mine. “Yes.”

I press my lips together disapprovingly. “You caveman. You want other shifters to see it.”

His lower lip firms. “Dogbane straight. I want everyone to see that you’re taken.”

Well. “Will I see it?”

He shakes his head, still searching my eyes. “No. It will only be visible to hodags.”

With a sigh, I rub at it.

He frowns. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

His eyes definitely show regret. His brows snap together, and deep furrows form on his forehead. Watching me carefully, he bends until his mouth is hovering over it. “Sorry it hurts,” he soothes, kissing the spot.

My phone alarm starts going off again.

Shepard’s mustache twitches up as his lips pull back in a silent snarl. He turns his head to glare in the direction of my phone like he’d like to pulverize it. “What now?”

He asks this as if the alarm is coming from an enchanted servant trapped in my cell phone who can be cowed by the master of the manor’s glower.

It isn’t. It keeps pealing its loud warning.

I pat his cheek. “Ease up. My phone’s just doing its job. That would be my ‘this is your last call, get your butt dressed’ alarm.”

I change forms in my room then get dressed in a navy T-shirt over a white long-sleeve that I tuck into jeans because Mirk told me casual was the dress code.

When I join Shepard in the kitchen, he’s procured frozen egg muffins and butter from his freezer and he’s in the middle of heating them up for us in a cast iron skillet.

“Mmm,” I say, coming up to lean against him as he mans the stove. “I don’t normally eat breakfast so this’ll be a treat.”

He sends me a sideways glance. “I’m not letting you leave here without feeding you breakfast.” He clears his throat.

“And… figured you’d need the fuel.” He means since I had to expend the energy to change.

His eyes stray to my neck, unblemished once more to my eye—but not to his, judging by the way his pupils dilate with primitive satisfaction when he sees the spot he nommed.

“Brute,” I accuse, but I don’t say it with any heat because he’s a shifter male. Possessive displays come with the territory.

In response, he catches me and kisses me soundly.

When we break apart, I have to retuck my long-sleeved shirt back into my jeans and I cast my gaze around, dazedly trying to collect my wits.

My eyes land on a machine on the counter that should help me considerably.

I cant my head in its direction and slide my eyes to Shepard, who is holding a spatula and watching me hungrily.

“I’m no good at operating coffeemakers with that many buttons.

Would you be sweet and make me coffee so I’ll seem like a nice human for my first day on the job? ”

At the reminder that I’m leaving him to go to work, his face falls. His firm lower lip sets, making him look almost sulky. It’s ridiculously adorable to recognize it on a grown man. On this man, anyway. “Already planned to,” he grouses, turning back to the pan and flipping our food.

I kiss his bearded face. “Thank you.”