Page 23 of Shifters Unifying (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

logan

No Man’s Land

After Midnight

Blueberries and sage…

The scent of her perfumed the air around me, and my mouth watered for want of the taste of her. How long had it been since I’d buried my tongue between her legs?

As far as I was concerned, two minutes was too long to be away from her.

Even as the responsibilities of protecting shifters and all of shifter-kind pulled at me, burying myself inside her was the culmination of everything I’d ever wanted, the sum of the alpha I’d become. I whined as I anticipated our meeting.

Moonlight poured from the sky, and a thunderstorm built in the distance, the clouds churned on the horizon. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I scented the breeze, recognizing two differing scents almost immediately. Another had been here. Emma and…

I squinted, sorting the scents in the air… It had been…

An armadillo.

When I stomped, my paw print dug into the soft soil, and I snorted at the wafting smell of earth and armadillo.

Tension snapped through me. As far as I could tell, this armadillo hadn’t even been a shifter.

Yet Acheron had the ability to hide in plain sight, and he’d been silent too long. He had to be circling closer.

When I tested the bond between us, it didn’t tell me anything new about my mate. She’d been calm for several hours, relaxed in a way like the way she’d been during the time after our shared orgasms had concluded.

The off-grid cabin was up ahead, and no out-of-place smells greeted me. Reasonably certain there were no intruders, I paused to consider what I should do—how I should approach our reunion.

The moonlight glinted off the solar panels on top of the roof.

One lone light burned in the living area at the front of the tiny home we’d moved into place a few years earlier as a project for my employees during a human-borne virus quarantine lockdown.

We hadn’t been sure if the human virus would impact the shifters, so we’d taken the opportunity to complete a laundry list of work at Six-Mile.

This was an opportunity to reunite in an exceptional way.

Unforgettable wasn’t something I had to ensure for Emma, of course—every moment we had together was memorable, but she deserved some special attention after the stress of the last few days.

The last few days had been intense. For me. For her. Especially for her.

However, taking time to show Emma how much she meant to me and how much I appreciated her as my mate, not as the multimorph, appealed to me. I ran through several scenarios in my head and settled on the most direct one:

Shift to my human form on the porch.

Gain entry to the cabin

Wrap her in my arms, carry her to the bed, ravish her, and make her scream my name. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat…

Attempt to break the frame under the mattress in the most romantic way possible. Failing the romance, snapping the bed legs would suffice.

The thought of enthusiastically breaking the bed frame with her made me grin.

It’d take some prowess to be able to break it and fuck her silly without wearing out her lady parts.

I intended to take as much time here as we could.

For a little while, we were caught in a lull between emergencies, and Olivia had said she would make excuses for us.

The wind ruffled the hair along my spine, and I shivered as I padded onto the front porch to enact step one of my plans, grunting as the wolf-to-human shifter magic took hold.

As I stood upright, I took a deep breath, determined to leave the drama of the clans behind. Focusing on Emma was my priority.

I turned the knob, surprised and frustrated to find Emma had left it unlocked.

A lone lamp burned in the living space. The filament in the bulb pulsed with the slight, rhythmic surge from the solar batteries.

A floor plank creaked beneath the weight of my feet, but no other sound met me as I eased into the small cabin and pressed the door closed behind me.

Her scent permeated the space, pushing reasonable thought from my mind. My mate’s lair would soon howl with pleasure. Ten steps into the kitchen space, and I spied Bonding & Mating Practices of Feline Shifter open on the dining room table. A soft chuckle escaped me.

Then I sensed her… close. Closer than she’d been for far too long.

From my left, Emma growled, low in her throat. “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

My skin prickled—not with fear, but overwhelming desire, and I pivoted, catching a thrown chair in mid-air and tossing it aside with the force of a mate, denied. It shattered against the wall.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I barked.

“Logan!” she yelped, dropping her hands to the curve of her hips, the lone light source marked her edges but left her mostly in silhouette.

Her eyes flashed, twin viridescent flames, signaling how much energy she’d drawn into her.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you think you should have called first? ”

An upward swipe of my hand flipped on the bright overheads, the light glinting on the dark blue tile, illuminating her hourglass form like a spotlight and setting the fantasies in my mind in motion.

Her nipples were already hard, delicate tips of the rounded peaks I knew so well.

Since her training began, her muscles had grown larger, more defined, and she resembled a tigress, preparing to pounce.

The inward curve of her waist invited me down… down… down…

I swallowed, struggling to maintain my hold on restraint as passion made my heart pound, sending a rush of blood to my dick.

Hard and fast wasn’t what I wanted for our night alone, away from the chaos of the shifters we were both meant to protect.

Instead, I asked, “Do you think there’s a landline here? ”

She glanced around, and her breasts quivered with the movement. “No…” She drew out the word, and her gaze dropped to the tattletale between my legs. “Still…”

“Did you bring your cell phone?” Fuck me. I want to drag you to the bedroom…

“Also, no.” Her gaze snapped back to mine, and her mouth twitched. Well, why don’t you?

Her challenge surprised me, chipped away at my control. She tipped her head to the side. “We have a bond between us, and you could have—should have—used that.”

“I don’t think it works that way. Besides, you could have used it to keep tabs on me.” Don’t. Tempt. Me. Emma.

Too late. She crossed her arms under her breasts and pushed up—intentionally, willfully.

Gah. Her areoles puckered around the tight buds.

She had to know what she was doing to me.

“We can hear each other’s thoughts sometimes,” she said, as though that wasn’t what we were doing right now. “A lot of times.”

“You mean when you’re packed so full of shifter energy your cells might explode.” I paused. We both knew what was going to happen tonight. “Or when we’re mated?”

One of her eyebrows arched. “Or when we’re standing in front of each other, pretending the audible conversation has anything to do with the one that’s really going on between us.”

I took a step toward her, and the floor squeaked. “What’s going on between us?”

“The only thing that can.” She trembled and took a shuddering gasp.

The cabin air snapped with tension and threatened to explode in a blaze.

“You exist in my mind, Logan, at the edge of every thought, and even though I know we’re living on borrowed time.

” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, sending the sensation of the smooth plumpness sliding through my mind.

“But I don’t care about the others. For tonight, I don’t care. ”

Another step brought her within my reach.

“You care,” I murmured, lifting my palm to her cheek.

My skin grazed hers. “That’s why everything about this is difficult.

If you didn’t care about them, you wouldn’t expect so much from yourself.

” You wouldn’t try so hard, risk so much each time you need to protect them.

Her eyes slid closed, hiding the glowing emerald orbs. A tear slipped down her cheek and disappeared beneath my hand. Make me forget how much depends on me. Take me to bed, Logan.

I hooked my hands under her arms and lifted her slowly, carefully, high enough to stare directly into her glowing, emerald eyes.

You’ve permeated every thought, every part of my life.

Nothing is as important as you, Emma. You’ve become the hope that keeps me going.

Even if the world around us teeters on the edge of destruction.

Emma moaned as she linked her hands behind my neck and her legs circled my waist, drawing herself hard against me. My arms slipped around her back, hugging her to me, relishing the feel of her breasts, her body… her.

She rocked her hips to rub the slick of her against the tip of my dick, fully erect and throbbing against her. My knees threatened to give way, and my groan echoed hers, salted by want and need. So much need.

But she leaned back, creating a gap between us.

“What is it?” I asked softly.

Gently, Emma pressed her palms to my face, her thumbs stroking the hollows of my cheeks.

The strands of her hair formed a multi-color curtain to block out anything else, block out everything beyond her.

“You’re my sanity,” she whispered, her breath feathering over my cheeks.

“You’re the rock that keeps me from being swept away in the flood. My peace.”

“And you are mine.”

She brought her lips to mine, tentative, almost shy.

The tip of her tongue traced my mouth, and I waited, opening only when she finally asked entry by slipping her tongue inside, searching for mine.

The space between us closed as our kiss deepened, and my hands slid down to cup her bottom as she stroked my dick with her inviting folds.

Tonight, aggression might break her, so I made no sudden moves, allowing her to lead, cherishing her as though she might shatter into a thousand pieces. How many times had my mate been dragged to the brink of fracture? How often had I been one of the reasons?

You are remarkable.

“You’re biased,” she murmured, pausing our kiss, but a grin split her face. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be us, just us… without Acheron?”

I nuzzled her neck, taking quick breaths of blueberries and sage. “It’d be a helluva a lot of this. All the time. Non-stop.”

She laughed. “Except when Olivia makes us eat.”

“Or Jasper,” I growled.

She patted my chest. “He means well, you know, and we need him on our side.”

“Sharing doesn’t come naturally… or easily.” You’re mine.

“But we need him.” I’m yours.

“I know.” Talk of the others threatened to bring reality in, so I glanced around the now, well-lit kitchen.

In the back, the cabin’s generator kicked on, adding a low hum to the silence of the surrounding forest, and the lights pulsed a little more, like a slow, relaxed heartbeat. “I have an important question for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Have you ever had sex in a kitchen?”

That coaxed another laugh from her, and she shook her head. “No, can’t say as I have.”

“Sounds like it’s time to remedy that.” Two steps brought me to the edge of the only counter space in the tiny house without an overhead cupboard, and I eased her onto the surface. She hissed with the shock of the chilled tile on her ass.

I gripped her waist before I moved to her breasts, one in each hand, brushing my thumbs over her peaks. “Too much? Too cold?”

Instead of answering, she clutched my shoulders, her fingernails digging into my skin, and dragged me closer. “You can warm me up.”

Lacing her fingers between mine, I moved her hands to the edge of the counter, placing one on each side of her. “You’re going to want to hold on,” I said, then crouched before her. “But I won’t let you fall.”

She grasped the edge but brought her thighs together. Even on the counter, I had to incline my head to reach her center. “What are you doing?”

“Taking my meal in the kitchen, and making sure you never forget,” I growled, slipping my hand between her knees. “Please? Let me?”

A moment later, she relaxed and opened her legs, displaying the glistening pink between her thighs.

She bit her bottom lip as I leaned close and inhaled.

A rush of blueberries and sage mixed with the feral scent of her sex, her arousal.

So wet, so earthy. Every inch of her alluring, intoxicating.

I pressed kisses to her inner thighs, inching closer to her center. My favorite place.

She squirmed on the edge, impatient with my careful delay.

Burying my face, I dragged the flat of my tongue over her sopping core, lapping at her slickness. Then using the tip, I flicked the bud hidden inside her mound, and she clenched, arching toward me. “Do you like that?”

Her hands tightened on the edge of the counter, so tight her knuckles turned white. “Don’t think I could ever get tired of it.”

“Good.” I lifted her legs, draping them over my shoulders before I went down on her again. Puckering my mouth around her clit, I hummed, deep and low, sending vibration through flesh. When I buzzed my lips, she jumped.

“Should I stop?” I murmured against her labia.

Her breath caught in her throat before whooshing from her. “No, no…” She breathed. “You’ve just never done that before.”

“Always room for improvement. Do you like it?”

“Oh, fuck, yes.” She guided my head back to her cleft, and another deep sigh slid out of her, as though she’d been waiting for me for a lifetime, the missing part of her.

“Lean back, my delicious love.”

She placed her hands on the counter behind her, and her head lolled to the side as a flush spread over her skin. Her rainbow hair cascaded over her chest, the ends curling around her breasts.

Slowly, I traced her folds and curves with my lips and my tongue, etching them into my memory, for the times apart, for the nights away.

Emma. I am lost without you. You are my home… forever.