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13

Sugar

I loved touching Grant. His body was the most beautiful male body I’d ever seen. I hadn’t seen many in real life, but on the Internet there were tons.

Grant surpassed them all.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to do more than look and touch. He never demanded a thing. He groaned when I touched him. His cock got even harder and wetter when I stroked him.

What might he need? I didn’t want to rub his skin too hard. But I got my palm damp from his leaking head, and that seemed to make him groan even more.

I rubbed him the way I might leisurely rub myself, and he let out big whooshes of air. His eyes closed. He was rigid and swollen, and within seconds his cock let out two big jets of white, then started bubbling all over my hands. Now he was wetter, and I could milk up easier until he was done.

His hard chest rose and fell. Echoes of his orgasm shuddered through my own body, as if we were connected. My hole spasmed.

I wiped my hands on my own chest, wanting his scent on me, and rested my body half on top of his, fitting my face between his shoulder and chin and kissing at his neck.

His hands came around me in an embrace I never wanted to end.

The covers had been tossed. We were bare to the room, but I wasn’t cold. He warmed me.

After a while, I had the most horrible urge to pee. I didn’t want to get up but I had no choice.

“Gotta go!” I ran naked across his bedroom floor to the bathroom.

After I returned, I saw he had neatened the bed. He was still naked, as far as I could tell, but had pulled the covers up to his waist.

I got in and he turned out the lamp. Then he took me in his arms, covering me all the way to my chin, and held me pillowed to his chest.

I was safe in his arms. “Grant. It all feels so real. So right.” Then I blurted, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He stroked one hand over my back.

“You do?”

“I think it’s obvious something big is happening between us.”

He was right, and always so calm. My heart was still pounding from what we’d just done.

“Thank you.” I kissed his neck. “For everything.”

He chuckled. “Thanks for landing in my yard.”

“The evil spell might not be so evil?” I asked.

“You’d have to ask its maker.”

“Plus, we have to wait until Christmas. If I turn into a figurine—” I stopped. My breath hitched. It wasn’t a joke but still a very real possibility.

“I promised you, remember? I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen. I’ll go to the North Pole or anywhere on Earth to keep you safe.”

“I believe you would.”

The next morning, I felt like light was coming out of every pore of my body and even out of my ass. Grant had made me come again using his mouth on me, and every time I thought about it I got hard. While eating. While doing the dishes. While letting Velvet out to pee.

Everything was different now. Grant stood closer to me whenever we were in the same room. He was always reaching out to touch my shoulder or my hair.

I thought my heart would burst from my chest because he was so perfect, and I was so in love.

When we sat together on the couch, he moved me with barely a flex of muscle until I was sitting on his lap leaning against his chest. We watched TV but mostly when we were that close, we kissed. And then we missed parts of the show.

I had to confess more feelings to him; I couldn’t hold back. “I feel all tingly, like I’m going to burst. It’s all the time today.”

“That’s called euphoria,” he said. “And me, too.”

“This is what it feels like when you’re with someone?” I asked.

“When you’re with the person who is just right for you, yes.”

“Euphoria. That’s such a good word. It’s definitely like I’m drunk or something.”

He chuckled and held me closer. When I squirmed a little too much and tried to press my body against his, he picked me up while I was still in his lap as if it took no effort and carried me to the bedroom.

There, he made love to me again until I couldn’t see or think for minutes afterward. He let me stroke him with oil he provided as if from thin air. He came, too, his body shaking and laughing.

“You’re laughing.”

“I am just happy, Sugar. So happy.”

That made me feel even higher. I floated through dinner and while sitting together by the fire, me in his lap again.

That night, in bed with just the lamp on, I asked what had been on my mind during different parts of the day.

“When you want more from me, you’ll tell me?” I asked.

He sat up a bit, forcing me to rise on one elbow and look him in the face. “Nothing until you’re ready.”

“I don’t know how to understand when I’m ready. I mean, I don’t know.”

“Then you aren’t ready.”

“But will it hurt do you think? It did before.”

He stroked his fingers down my face. “I will never hurt you. If it happens, it happens and it will be right. We don’t have to rush anything.”

I thought about my stupid encounter with that strange alpha years ago. I hadn’t been ready, and it hadn’t been right. I didn’t even make slick in my ass for him. It was raw and awful, and it stung so bad for days after. I didn’t tell a single soul, not even Sno.

“I didn’t have slick when he did it. That was wrong, right?”

Grant leaned up and kissed me on the lips. “Yes, I think it probably was.”

“I was pretty stupid a lot of times in my life.”

“I have been, too. I don’t know anyone who is perfect.”

“Not even shifters?”

“Nope. Not even shifters.”

“You seem perfect.”

Grant chuckled. “You and me, little elf. We’re the two most perfect people on Earth.”

I kissed him hard for that, opening my mouth.

We were naked and pressed together. His hands moved over my ass. The things it did to me, that touch. We might not be ready for more, but I liked the caresses. I liked that area getting a lot of attention.

After we made love yet again, I fell into a deep, warm sleep.

The days flew by, every day better than the last.

In-between the hours Grant worked, we went snowshoeing again. Grant showed me how to tell the difference between snowshoe hare tracks and porcupines and foxes. We saw evidence of elk and moose. But no reindeer.

One day, when the snows had melted down for easier walking, we headed out toward the river. Grant suddenly stopped, setting down his pack and walking stick.

“Here looks like a good place.”

“For what?”

Grant began to take off his hat, scarf and mittens. Then his jacket.

“Are you hot?”

He said nothing.

When he started on his shirt, placing it over the pack, then shucked his boots and pants, I knew what was happening.

As Grant stood naked in the snow surrounded by frosted trees, it was so beautiful I wanted to draw him, paint him just like that. He looked like a sculpture that belonged in a museum. His muscles stood out, rippling under the skin as he moved. He looked at me, smiled, then held his arms out a little and turned.

I had a moment of disorientation; my eyes blurred. Grant became a swirl of flesh and fur and suddenly, standing before me was the most gorgeous reindeer I’d ever seen.

Velvet barked, dancing in circles. She wasn’t afraid.

“Grant, you’re so beautiful.”

He looked at me, his head cocked, his antlers large. I’d learned from him that male reindeer shed their antlers in the fall, but shifters did not. This time of year, if he found a herd, he would stand out.

Grant turned again, ears up, and trotted away from me. He kicked at some snow, then moved forward again. Without warning, he took off at a run into the trees. I heard hooves on icy snow, then nothing.

“That is amazing, isn’t it?” I asked Velvet.

She walked over to Grant’s pack and sat beside it, waiting. She was used to this. She knew he would come back, and it was her job to guard his stuff.

There was a rock by the tree. I used it as a bench and waited with Velvet.

“He’s so beautiful,” I said to Velvet.

She grunted and put her head on top of his pack.

The woods were silent, glinting like diamonds in the November sun. The days were so short now, officially about nine hours. But we got sun for only about half of that and the rest was like prolonged dusks and dawns.

The cold air creeped in under my scarf. Velvet was also getting colder as she huddled against the pack.

About twenty minutes later, Grant came loping back to us. He shifted quickly and, before my eyes could adjust, he stood naked in the snow again, reaching for his clothes.

I got up. “That’s so cool.”

He grinned at me.

I handed him each piece of clothing as he got dressed.

“Velvet guarded your pack for you.”

“Thank you, Velvet.” He patted her head.

She gazed at him with adoration.

“I helped.”

“Thank you, Sugar.” Instead of petting me, he leaned down and kissed me.

Grant finished dressing, then looked around. “Feels like the temperature has dropped. Are you guys cold?”

“A little.”

“Let’s head back. We need a clearer day to picnic at the river.”

“And maybe a warmer one?”

“Agreed.”

I was so elated I got to see him shift. It didn’t matter to me that he couldn’t fly. He was magical all by himself.