Hit List ab-20 Read online

  “Because I’d like some of what we do to just be us, and not the metaphysics.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I’d rather ease you into your first sex in two years than pounce on you like a starving wolf.”

  “Pounce on me?” He gave me a look as if he didn’t think I could pounce on him.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “I could totally pounce on you.”

  He smiled, flashing those dimples. “Bet you couldn’t.”

  “If you mean arm-wrestle you and win, you’re right. I’d lose, but pouncing isn’t about strength.”

  “What is it about?” he asked.

  “Sex,” I said.

  He frowned at me. “I do not think pouncing means the same thing to you that it means to me, then.”

  I grinned at him. “Probably not, but you want me to have sex with you, right?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then I’ll win, because you want to me to pounce on you.”

  He flashed those dimples again. “You’re saying that I’ll let you win.”

  I reached up, sliding my hands over his shoulders, drawing him down toward me. “I’m saying that it’s a win-win.” My hands slid down his back as he came closer.

  His face was so close I couldn’t focus on it, as he said, “I like to win.”

  “So do I,” I said. I whispered it against his lips.

  Then he kissed me, tentative at first, as if he weren’t quite sure what to do, and then a sound escaped his throat. A sound full of longing, eagerness, and he remembered how to kiss. He remembered how to kiss, and how to have eager hands run down my body while he did it. We kissed until we had to break just to catch our breath, and broke apart laughing.

  We laughed until he moved his hips just a little and I could feel that he was hard and eager now. It made me look down at him and there was nothing soft now. He was very hard, long and smooth, and wide. “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  “I’ve never had a woman say that to my penis before.”

  I looked at his face. “Then they were fools, and I like men. I like everything about them.”

  “Most women seem a little afraid of us.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not afraid.”

  “No,” he said, and his voice was growing deeper, “you’re not.” He drew out of my arms and slid lower on my body. “I want to taste you. I want to look up your body and watch your eyes roll back into your head, and then I want inside you.”

  Just staring down at him, watching that eager darkness fill his eyes, tightened things low in my body. I tried to get in my way; tried to keep myself from enjoying the moment, but the ardeur was just there behind my eyes, inside my head, my heart, my gut, and it wanted him. The beasts inside me seemed strangely sluggish. The weretigers in all their colors that had been so eager for him earlier flicked a tail tip at me, opened lazy eyes the color of fire, and three different shades of blue: pale sky blue, the gray-blue of a cloudy day, and blue with that golden edge of dawn to it. All three of the tigresses concerned with the man who was kissing his way down my hip seemed almost sleepy, content, as if they’d already fed, or just woken from a nap. Apparently, the drugs they’d given me for pain really had worked. I’d remember to get the name of the drug so I could share it with the other wereanimals. Any painkiller that actually worked for lycanthropes would be a real godsend.

  The tigers were content to let the ardeur feed, while they watched like some huge version of sleepy housecats. Or maybe it had just been so long since I’d fed the ardeur that even the beasts inside me knew it had to come first. Maybe they hadn’t liked the physical cage of my body being so badly injured either. How do you know what a tiger thinks?

  Ethan snuggled down between my legs, kissing slowly on the very inner edge of my thigh, each kiss getting him closer and closer to things that were so intimate. Again, I tried to get in my own way; what was I doing letting a stranger go down on me? But his mouth moved from my thigh to other things, and that one caress of lips and tongue bowed my spine, threw my head back against the pillow, made my hands grab onto the sheets.

  His mouth was so warm, his tongue licking around and over me, tracing the edges of every fold, exploring every part of me, so that it wasn’t just about hunting for that magic button and the orgasm, but truly about exploring and tasting me. He’d told me exactly what he wanted, and now he was doing it. It wasn’t just that it felt amazing, but the sheer joy he took in it. Some men, like some women, do oral sex like a duty, but some truly enjoy it. Take pleasure in every part of the act, enjoying, relishing every lick, every suck, every bit of writhing they can get from their partner. Ethan was one of those lovers. But then he’d had years to fantasize, and now that the fantasy was true, he was going to suck every bit of enjoyment out of it he could.

  He sucked on that one sweet spot, and drew me over the edge, spilling that heavy, delicious, weight between my legs up and over me. It bowed my spine so that my upper body half rose from the bed like someone was pulling me upward on a string like a puppet lost to pleasure. My body fell back against the bed, writhing and jerking like the strings had been cut and I could only dance brokenly, joyously on the bed. I was boneless, helpless with pleasure, eyes fluttered closed so that I was blind.

  The bed moved around me and I knew, vaguely, that he was crawling upward across my body, but it wasn’t until I felt him long and hard, brushing against the delicate bits that he’d just finished sucking that I cried out again, my body writhing, eyes opening wide, staring up at him. He brushed the tip of him across that spot again; it made me writhe again and stare down between our bodies to find his hand around himself, using his own body as a toy to brush against me, and begin to roll the tip of him over and over on that spot.

  There were already little jerks of preorgasm coming as he rubbed himself against me. The question was, would I go before he did? I wanted him inside me before that happened. I wanted to feel him put what was brushing against the smallest bit of me deep inside me.

  I tried to find words to say that, to be able to articulate around the growing weight and warmth that was already building again between my legs.

  His voice came breathy with strain, “I can’t hold out. I’m too close.”

  I managed to gasp, “Inside, inside me.”

  He looked at me, gray eyes a little too wide, and just nodded. He used his hand to guide himself lower, and I felt him begin to push inside me. “Gods, so tight, so wet, so warm.” I wanted to say that sometimes after oral sex I seemed to tighten, but I had no words outside my head as he pushed the head of himself inside me. It felt too good for words. It felt too good for thinking.

  I cried out for him, “God!”

  “I’m not in yet,” he said, “try not to move that much, please.” The please was strangled, his voice deeper, eager, as if more of his body wanted inside than just the part that was sliding inside me.

  I tried to do what he asked. I tried not to move, but parts of me were moving that were even more involuntary than the rest of me. “Gods, you’re spasming around me.”

  “Inside, just shove inside me,” I managed to say.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t, I promise.”

  He shook his head and tried to stay with his careful push, but I’d had enough, or the ardeur had, or both. I unleashed that passion, that tidal wave of want and need. One moment he was being careful, the next his eyes went so wide I could see the whites of his eyes, and then he shoved himself inside me in one long push of his hips. It made me scream his name to the ceiling, and when he started to shove himself in and out of me, finding a nearly desperate rhythm as he fought his body, my body, and the ardeur so that it would last, my body writhed so that I screamed his name to the wall behind me.

  “Ethan!” My nails dug into the bed, because I needed something to anchor me, to anchor us, as he rode above me, and I felt him fill up every inch of me.

  “Gods!” He yelled it, in a voice gone low and
growling.

  I looked up at him and watched his gray eyes shift above me. They’d been tiger eyes, but now they were tiger eyes the color of amber and morning sky. I knew that color.

  His hips thrust one more time so deep that it did dance that line between overwhelming pleasure and almost pain, but it brought me, too, so that we rode the orgasm together, and I fed. I fed on his body between my legs; I fed on him spilling himself inside me; I fed on my nails raking down his arms, as he stayed propped above me, and then his body convulsed again, thrusting deep, tearing screams from both our throats, and with the second release his body gave. The human body above me spilled outward in an rain of thick, hot liquid, and the body between my legs was golden furred with stripes of dark amber framing that face with its hazel-blue eyes.

  He growled my name. “Anita, what have you done to me?”

  I ran my hands down the light, dry fur of his arms; it was unbelievably soft. “Brought you home,” I said.

  He collapsed on top of me, and I had to push at the last minute so this larger, heavier upper body didn’t press me into the bed. He was still deep inside me, bigger there in this form, too. It made me turn my body, so that we were on our sides, one of my legs over his thigh. I couldn’t move well enough to wrap myself around his hips yet.

  I think he tried to pull out of me, but he wasn’t used to the new size, and he’d just had sex, and just done a violent shapeshift that had left him exhausted. He blinked at me. “This isn’t me.”

  “I smelled gold on you the first time we met,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

  “Impossible.” He managed to put one furred hand on my side so he could see the golden fur against my skin. He was growing softer with the wonder of it all, or the exhaustion, or the shock, and was able to spill out of me. The movement made us both writhe. When we could talk again, he said, “No one has four forms.”

  “You do,” I said, and laid my hand against the swell of his pectorals. They’d been nice in human form, but everything got bigger in the beast-man form. He looked like a bodybuilder in this body. It made me wonder what some of the other wereanimals at home who were serious bodybuilders must look like in beast-man form. It was unusual to have sex in half-form, so I didn’t usually get this close.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  I moved my gaze from his chest to his face, that strangely attractive mix of human and cat. I said the only thing that I could say in that moment. “That you are beautiful.”

  It made him do that cat grin, drawing back to flash teeth that could have torn me to bits. He drew me into his arms, his fur the driest thing in the bed. I’d never understood why the liquid from the shapeshift gets everything else wet and leaves the fur dry. “I’ll get you all messy,” I said.

  “It’s my mess,” he whispered, and he drew me into the warm, dry, circle of his body, while I was still covered in the thick, cooling liquid. He hugged me to him, and I had to snuggle down to find that point where I could rest under his arm, against his chest, against his stomach, and vaguely against the rest of him, but it wasn’t about sex now, it was about comfort. He held me to him, held me close, and began to shake. It took me a moment to realize Ethan was crying.

  I petted the fur and muscle of him, so tall now, so strong, able to tear me limb from limb without a thought, but all that big body clung to me. He clung to me and cried and I held him, my hands petting him, soothing him. I didn’t ask why he was crying; it didn’t matter what sorrow he was weeping out against my body, against the damp sheets, it only mattered that I held him and told him that it would be all right.

  25

  BEFORE I COULD go off crime solving I had to shower. I was covered nearly head to foot in thick, clear goop. I’d learned from past experience that it dried fast and became very tacky, very quickly. I didn’t even want to put clean clothes over the mess of it, let alone explain to the other cops what it was, and why I was covered in it, which was why I was in the shower when Ethan knocked on the door of the bathroom.

  “Anita,” he called; his deeper voice must have been lost in the rush of water the first time, because he said my name again, and knocked louder. “Anita!”

  I turned off the water, grabbed a towel to wipe my face, and got my Smith & Wesson from the little shelf in the back of the shower. That shelf’s supposed to keep soap from getting wet while you shower, but my soap could take its chances; some of the smaller handguns actually fit just fine there.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, towel in one hand, gun in the other. Depending on his answer I’d know if I had time to wrap my hair up.

  “There’s a marshal at the door. I can’t answer the door like this.”

  He was still in half-man form, and he was absolutely right. Wereanimals were legal citizens with a health issue, but to police they were a walking, talking public safety hazard. Some cops would shoot first and let God and the paperwork sort it all out later.

  I called, “I’m coming.” I put the gun back on the shelf so I could wrap my hair up in the towel. Then I got the second towel and wrapped it around my body. I didn’t take time to dry much either. I did not want some overzealous fellow marshal to get a glimpse of a weretiger through a drape edge and think he had to save me. Having someone shoot Ethan, or my having to shoot another cop to save him, would have all kinds of suck on it.

  With the towel secured, and my left hand on top of it just in case, I was as decent as I was going to get without taking time to throw on clothes. My modesty wasn’t worth Ethan getting shot.

  I was toweled and gunned as I came out of the bathroom. “Get in the bathroom,” I said.

  He blinked those blue and gold eyes at me. “Am I hiding?”

  “No, just out of sight until I explain that you’re a good guy to the other marshal.”

  Ethan did that cat smile again, a drawing back from the teeth. “Am I a good guy?”

  I took the time to smile at him, as someone knocked very solidly on the door. “Of course you are.” I used the gun to motion him toward the bathroom. He did what I wanted, bending down to get under the doorway. As the door closed behind him, I went to the door. I called out, “Who is it?”

  “Anita, it’s Bernardo Spotted-Horse.”

  That stopped me for a second. The last time I’d seen Bernardo had been in Las Vegas when he, Edward, and another marshal were after a preternatural serial killer. He was using his real and only name as a marshal, but before he got a badge he’d worked with Edward as a mercenary, bounty hunter, and assassin.

  I unlocked the door, gun at my side, and opened the door. The towel chose that moment to begin to slip off me, so I was grabbing for it as the door swung inward.

  “Now this is the way for a woman to open the door,” Bernardo said.

  I glared up at him. I had the towel hugged to my breasts, and no nipple was showing, but way more flesh than I’d planned was on display.

  He grinned down at me. With the wraparound sunglasses still on he looked model perfect, if you were into tall, dark, and handsome. I’d once thought he was American Indian GQ gorgeous, but the attitude was way more Playgirl. His nearly waist-length hair spilled around his shoulders, a black so dark that it had blue highlights in the sunshine that slanted across the cement upper story. His wide-shouldered upper body was encased in a black leather jacket that fit like a second skin and emphasized the black jeans that damn near outlined his lower body and ended in midcalf boots.

  “I was in the shower,” I said.

  “I can see that.” The grin was not his usual come-hither smile, it was just pure delight.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said, “and give me a second to refasten the towel.”

  “Tease,” he said.

  I frowned at him and ducked behind the partially open door to secure the towel again. When it was as secure as I could make it, I opened the door and ushered him inside. “You were wearing nothing but a sheet the first time I saw you,” I said.

  He entered the room close to the wall, eyes se
arching the room as he took his sunglasses off. His eyes were as pure a brown as my own. He nodded. “I’d have come across the moment I met you, so it wasn’t false advertising on my part. But unless you’ve changed a great deal you aren’t going to offer me that much hospitality.” His eyes were searching the room, taking in the details. Ethan had stripped the far bed down to its mattress. He must have done it while I was in the bathroom, but he’d been right to do it, unless we wanted to owe the motel a new mattress.

  I knew that Bernardo had taken in the stripped bed, the pile of bedding. Hell, sometimes you can smell sex in a room if it’s recent enough. He looked at me, face softening to something more serious. “I saw a shadow a lot taller than you through the drapes. Why are you hiding him?”

  “I thought it was one of the local marshals,” I said.

  “You’re a big girl, why hide?” he asked. He gave me a very direct look. When we’d first met years ago he’d played the handsome flirt and hidden that there was a good mind to go with the great body. Smart is way more dangerous than cute when you’re hiding things.

  I called out, “Ethan, it’s all right, you can come out.” I made sure to watch Bernardo’s face. His eyes widened, just a bit. He made one of those, well, faces, as in, Well, I didn’t expect that. He tried to cover that I had shocked him, or at least surprised him, by sliding the earpiece of his sunglasses into a pocket on his chest. He busied himself unzipping his jacket.

  I glanced behind me to find that Ethan had stopped about halfway across the small room. The sunlight streaming through the big window was barely filtered by the thin curtains; no wonder Bernardo had seen a shadow from outside. But now Ethan was half revealed in that bright filtered light, and half in the room’s dimness, as if he stood in the midst of trees and sunlight streaming through leaves. It was almost as if even standing in the bland motel room, an echo of jungle and wildness touched that shining yellow and gold fur. He was also at least six-six, maybe six-eight in this form. Bernardo was six-one and used to being tall. He had his left hand sort of half behind the swell of his ass, and I knew that the short, stylish jacket was short for a reason. He was carrying his main gun at the small of his back. In a short jacket he could be warm and still do a quick draw. Winter concealed carry was always a fight between staying warm and not getting yourself killed because you couldn’t get to your weapons in time.