Page 99 of Shifting Hearts

FOUR

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“ I remember your moans last night.”

Warm firm lips grazed the shell of my ear in a seductive caress.

Whatever the hell ever I expected to hear in the forest with that thing, the tree man in the middle of the clearing who stared down at me like some sort of benevolent god who I swore closed the paths and forest around us…

It wasn’t that.

“What?” I stopped struggling, speaking the single word into the man— wolf’s —hand, and twisted in his embrace to face him fully.

Dark eyes with no whites gazed down at me.

There was nothing forgiving in his deadly face that was all angles and hard lines, coated with black and grey lines like markings that had not yet erupted from beneath his skin.

A sense of an unyielding hardness exuded from him.

One corner of his arched mouth that held a carved quality tugged upward.

The motion was so brief that I might have imagined it, but we didn't think so.

That he found my plight—me, trapped here, in a circle of trees with him while he talked about stalking me last night while I— while I?—

My cheeks blazed with heat that originated from a source a whole lot lower on my body at the recognition that he really did know what I’d done last night in the quiet hours when I thought everyone else in the house was asleep.

But you weren’t in the house.

The lips I’d admired twisted up into a cruel smile that could have been an artwork in their own right. And while I admired the deadly creature before more, I realized that he stood a mere hairbreadth from away. If he spoke, we’d touch—intimately.

But nothing could be more intimate than what he just pronounced into my ear in the middle of a haunted forest.

“What did you say?” I repeated. My mind caught up with what he’d said even though my body understood the implications just fine. He was there. He knew.

The wolf leaned forward so we shared the same breath, our mouths grazing with every word.

His hand slid beneath the remains of my hooded cloak, hard fingers tangled in my hair to hold me in place.

I couldn't move anywhere—forward or back.

Turning about had been my last mistake. My mind screamed at how dangerous this was, this whole situation, but I wanted to hear him say it.

Needed to hear the confession fall from his lips before he devoured me for my sins.

I’m not crazy. I knew someone was there ? —

I’d known, because the last moan I’d heard that night hadn’t come from my lips.

Now, I knew that that sound came from him.

The wolf didn’t answer me, though a peculiar brand of cruel bemusement streaked across his black eyes.

“Say it,” I snapped, shoving my hands against his chest, his shoulder, anywhere I could reach, but the man was as immovable as?—

Well, as a tree.

Hello, Immovable. Please meet Unstoppable Force.

“You’re very sweet, aren’t you?” He licked those delectable arched lips with a long red tongue as I banged against his chest in the greatest show of futility I suspected the forest had ever seen.

Okay, so maybe my confidence was overrated.

Snarling in his face, I barged a shoulder forward beneath his armpit, and slammed my opposite elbow upward into his solar plexus.

Or at least, where I expected his solar plexus to be.

If he were a normal person I figured that would be the area that would give me an advantage.

Which, of course, wasn’t possible in this…

“Stupid, fucking, forest,” I panted, still shoulder barging and head butting the muscular wall that looked down at me like I was an adorable kitten doing a wonderful job of being a-fucking-dorable.

I spent years making sure I never crossed paths with the forest’s scare inhabitants. Yet here I was, battling two of them. Well, fighting one while the other watched. Wolf dude and tree guy.

Not weird at all.

I gave one last mighty heave, because if ever there was a time to be mighty, this was it, and slammed both fists at the wolfman’s chest. My creepy fucking stalker and general hot guy—okay, so they were both godlike but now was not the time—fell promptly on his ass.

He stared up at me in a state of fluctuating bemusement and disgust with himself while the tree behind me laughed.

I smirked while the wolf flailed in the dirt.

“Fuck,” furboy muttered.

A girl can’t always pick her allies, alright?

“I’m not the one on my butt in the dirt,” I murmured, and flicked him the bird for good measure.

“You have a feral little mouth. Has anyone ever tell you that, princess?” The man, all clothed in black— silk, or were those really satin pants? –-rose, towering over me.

Black hair shot with fine lines of crinkled gray fell over his face, highlighting sharp cheekbones.

A wide wedge of silver chest hairs looked soft, with their own crooked markings.

Flat planes lay beneath bare muscle fighting for prime real estate with patterned fur that matched the markings on his face.

Every inch of him looked carved. What wasn’t wolfish was inked with oversized patterns in gray swirls.

I instantly wanted to touch each and find out if that chest hair was as soft as it appeared. Was it wrong to want to pet your stalker wolf? From what he said, he enjoyed my show last night, while I’d thought I was being subtle.

A second glance confirmed that his slinky black top did in fact match the pants, and they were most definitely in pj land.

A lounge suit, at best. Not that satin or silk or whatever it was didn't look sexy as hell on him.

More that they resembled pajamas rather than rockstar level tight.

They still outlined his, uh, package and that was clearly visible.

More than visible, staining the thin material as he stalked toward me.

“What are you?” I tried for time, backing up a step, then two. Another.

Shit.

A quick glance confirmed the trees were still locked trunk to trunk at my back like a personal prison designed just for me.

The thought sent a shiver rioting over my flesh, and it wasn’t all the fear based sort.

The man before me looked at me like he wanted to eat me for dinner.

Or maybe just rip me apart, or rip my clothes off.

Desire flickered across his face, and I decided I wasn't the one I'd call feral today.

He looked wild, dangerous. Every aspect of him, from the gray swirls inked into his skin, or roiling beneath it to the sharp tips of his nails— hell, are those claws? —called to me. I ached for his touch on my bare flesh, despite that I’d just pulled away from his imprisoning embrace.

I shook my head, trying to bring myself back to the present.

And if he just wants to chew on the bones beneath your skin?

This is how you become a statistic that never emerges from the forest. Something it devours, and not in the way you mean.

If I didn’t concentrate, I’d end up scattered pieces of flesh on the forest floor while a tree god laughed at my demise and curled his roots around my remains.

This is not how I die.

I glared at the man, retreating one small step as he stalked forward in a new sort of dance. “What’s your name?”

“Wolf.”

His response stopped me short. “As in your name is Wolf, or… You are a wolf?” I reached for one of his clawed hands then drew mine back in horror. “I mean—” Breath sat unfiltered in my lungs while I asphyxiated on stale air.

He watched me choke with that same sense of amusement from before. Death is not unknown to him .

I am so fucked.

My gaze flitted to the direction he came from and far too late it hit me that I should have taken those fourteen breaths I wasted mouthing off and run until my feet bled, racing for the forest’s edge.

But how did one escape a forest when the god within it set the paths?

I closed my eyes, knowing instinctively that the only reason I’d been able to free the children was because of the forest’s whim. And now, it led me here. Why ? Is it my day to die?

I returned my gaze to the wolf, and asked my silent question.

Are you my executioner?

His head tilted to one side as he considered me, and answered what I’d asked. But not the response I required.

“Wolf is the only name I’ve ever known.” Something flickered in his eyes. That was all the warning he gave before he launched forward, crashing his hard, lean frame into me.

I tumbled with the force of his momentum until my back slammed into another hard surface—the tree man.

Hard branches jutted out either side of my head, preventing me from turning inside a cavity custom made to fit my shoulders. His trunk encased me coffin-like, on both sides, preventing me from shifting my hips or torso. Wolf pressed our bodies together until I stood pinned between man and tree.

Flesh and warmth overwhelmed me on one side.

Wolf was as hard and chiseled as advertised, his package as equally defined, pressing hard into my stomach.

Heat flushed through me at the impossibleness of it all.

I wriggled but he only pressed closer and the unyielding surface behind me meant I had backed myself literally into a corner.

And last night’s fantasy—the one where I had let myself fade into the darkness thinking I was alone—rushed over me. Being held between two men, their bodies working frantically as I tried to take them both at once but couldn’t ? —

And they found a way to fill me anyway.

That’s the fantasy I'd moaned to with my toy between my legs. A rounded piece of offcut timber from this forest. Now I wondered if that hadn’t been a huge mistake.

Almost as big a mistake as letting fantasy and reality cross lines in my mind.

Liquid deluged my thighs. The scent of my arousal hit me.

My gaze refocused to find Wolf staring at me.

His eyes darkened to match the forest’s shadows as he burrowed his body against mine, and I knew I wouldn’t escape him tonight.