Kiss and Kin: A Sexy Shifter story Read online

  Taran buried his face in her neck with a muffled groan. The powerful alpha—so much bigger, so much stronger than her—wrapped his arms around her waist so tentatively she thought her heart would break.

  He still smelled a little of his cologne and the indefinable, unmistakable odor of a changing or just-changed wolf. She likened the scent to clean soil and fresh leaves, with a hint of pine.

  Taran breathed heavily as she trailed her open mouth across his shoulder and up his neck. His skin was hot against her tongue. “You want me,” she breathed. “You want me.”

  “Fuck, Lark, yes,” he groaned. “I can’t even… Christ, baby, I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” She ran a finger down the scar on his cheek. The vein in his jaw began to twitch again. “What’s there to apologize for?” she asked softly.

  He started to answer, but she crushed her mouth to his. She’d never taken a man’s mouth like that before. She twisted her fingers in his silky amber locks as she raked the roof of his mouth with her tongue and arched against him.

  She whimpered in protest when he suddenly broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers.

  “Tell me to stop,” he rasped. “Tell me this is a mistake, and we need to stop, and I will.”

  “Why?” she asked angrily. Hurt and confused at his sudden hesitation, she drew back. “You’re the big bad alpha! You started it, damn it. You think it’s such a mistake, stop it yourself.”

  She cried out when he slid his hands under her, cupping her ass and pulling her hard against him, his stiff cock pressing into her stomach. His hot breath stirred her hair. She felt him smile.

  “Are you challenging me, silly brat?” he growled.

  His hands burned through her lounge pants. She hadn’t put on panties after her bath, and she squirmed at the sensation of soaking wet flannel between her legs.

  “I’m serious, Taran.” Her voice shook. So did her fingers as they drifted through the curly golden hair of his chest and stomach. “You can’t start something like this and then act like you didn’t mean to do it. And you can’t call me ‘silly brat’ while you’re squeezing my ass.”

  He laughed softly into her hair.

  “That’s not a joke. Shit,” she muttered into his chest, startled to find herself close to tears. “You never laugh when I say something funny, now you think I’m funny when I’m not joking.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re upset? What’d I do?” He put a hand under her chin to turn her face up, but she yanked her head away.

  “You kiss me and apologize, you kiss me again and tell me to stop you, then you treat me like a little girl. Do you want me or not, Taran?”

  He tensed, going perfectly still. “Lark, if you knew how much I wanted you, you’d run like hell.”

  “You don’t know that,” she scoffed.

  His voice took on a familiar hard edge, the one he got when he lectured her. “I just mean there are things you don’t know, things I haven’t told—”

  “So? There are things you don’t know about me. You don’t know what I think or what I feel, you just assume you do.”

  “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “What, now? Taran, you idiot, once you stick your tongue down my throat and grab my ass, you don’t get to play big brother any more. We’re not that kind of rednecks.”

  She stood up, pushing at his shoulders. He didn’t move. Legs awkwardly akimbo, she found herself trapped between him and the couch.

  She shivered when he growled softly, his face just inches away from her sex. His breath warmed her belly. He rubbed his cheek against her stomach, sandpaper stubble tickling her skin through the thin T-shirt, and she gasped to realize she’d thrust her hips against him.

  A hot rush of desire turned her legs to liquid. She would’ve crumpled if he hadn’t taken hold of her at the exquisitely sensitive spot just below her butt. His hands were so large his fingers wrapped around the inside of her thighs. The thought of him sliding his hands up just a fraction of an inch brought a new flood of wetness. She heard him draw a deep breath, and she knew he smelled her arousal. She bit her lip and whimpered at the ache between her legs. He growled deep in his throat and squeezed her thighs.

  Are you challenging me, silly brat? She hadn’t just challenged him, she reflected; she’d teased and taunted and insulted him. She’d played chicken with an alpha, and she’d lost.

  Or not.

  “Sit down, Lark,” he said in a dangerously soft voice, his mouth moving against her stomach. She obeyed, because even with his assistance her legs would no longer support her.

  She collapsed to the couch. He slid one hand into her hair and pulled her head back, gripping her chin with the other hand before slowly, with agonizing thoroughness, running his tongue across her top and bottom lips, over and over till she was dizzy, her body suffused with heat and trembling. He bit her bottom lip and sucked on it, hard.

  The burning knot of desire in her belly got hotter, and the heat spread lower. Her sex throbbed with wet fire, her spread thighs making the torture so much worse, and she clenched and unclenched her lower muscles in a desperate, fruitless attempt to ease the ache.

  He thrust his thumb just inside her lips and ran it over her bottom teeth, smiling slightly when she gently bit it. His tongue replaced his thumb, and she moaned under the onslaught of his kisses.

  “Stay here,” he said against her mouth. His voice vibrated inside her chest. He stepped away, and she suppressed a groan as she pressed her thighs together with relief. She sat stupefied, fighting to get her breath back while he walked to the glass doors and drew the curtains shut, then wandered to the loveseat, picking up her brandy glass on the way.

  She watched him prowl the room, enthralled with his supple grace and the wild beauty of his body. He turned out the lamp on the end table. The fire behind him cast shadows and highlights across his brawny arms and shoulders, his strapping chest and the flat planes of his stomach. Her mouth went dry as she stared at the fine line of downy blond hair that tapered and disappeared into his blue jeans, tight and straining with his erection.

  He was teasing her, she knew, revving her motor and making her wait for the downshift.

  She looked up when he nudged her legs apart with his knee. Brandy glass in one hand, he gripped her thigh with his other hand as he smoothly knelt in front of her again. He stared at her lap as he pushed her leg aside, and when his eyes returned to her face, his slow, wicked smile of lust and promise drew a shuddering moan of need she didn’t even try to hide.

  He tipped the brandy glass to wet his index finger in the golden amber liquid—the same color as his hair, she noted dreamily—and rubbed it on her lips. He repeated the process, and put his finger between her lips, watching her mouth as she sucked. “Harder,” he murmured, and she obeyed, swirling her tongue around his rough skin. He smiled at the faint pop when he pulled his finger out, and he held the glass up to her lips.

  She took a small sip. He licked the excess off her lip before he reached over to put the glass on the coffee table.

  “Raise your arms.”

  Shaking, weak with wanting, she stretched her arms above her head. She closed her eyes and whimpered softly as he began to push the T-shirt up over her ribcage. Her nipples throbbed, already unbearably tight and tingling in anticipation of his touch, and she cried out in torment when his thumbs brushed over them and kept going. Her breath came in short, labored gasps.

  “Open your eyes, Lark. I want to see you looking at me.”

  She stared at the familiar, beloved face and saw a stranger whose hands and mouth had set her body on fire, a fire he now stoked slowly and relentlessly while she burned from the inside out. She shuddered with every breath she drew, waiting for him to finish pulling the shirt over her head and past her fingertips. When at last it came off, she gasped as air flowed across her breasts.

  “Put your hands behind your head, baby,” he said in a low, ragged rasp.

  She bent her elbows behind her head and a
rched her back. The rough hunger in his face and his harsh, uneven breaths sent a primal thrill coursing through her as she realized he burned for her just as she did for him. But his masterful control never wavered. She, not he, sobbed with pleasure when he cupped her breasts in his feverish hands and flicked his thumbs across the taut, diamond-hard nipples.

  She put her head back. Instead of kissing her, he took her throat with his mouth, a declaration of dominance. He slid his teeth up and down, his tongue tracing her veins while his fingers traced her areolae. She shivered at the delicious friction of calloused hands against delicate tissue.

  He chuckled when she sank her fingers in his hair and pushed his head down to her breast. His scalding, wet mouth closed on her nipple and every time he sucked, she felt an answering throb between her legs. She scooted closer to the edge of the couch, tightening her legs around his, urgently and helplessly thrusting against him.

  “I’ve wanted this so long.” His mouth moved to her other breast, his teeth teasing her nipple, his tongue soothing the bites. “I can’t stop, baby. I can’t stop.”

  “I don’t want you to,” she breathed.

  She screamed when he slid his hand between their bodies and squeezed her mound. His fingers pressed the flannel fabric between her swollen lips, rubbing it back and forth against her folds while his thumb made slow circles on her clit.

  She writhed against his hand and struggled to breathe through the moans racking her body.

  “Look at me, Lark.”

  She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and gazed, eyes half-closed, at his ravaged angel countenance. He stared at her, rapt.

  “You’re beautiful like this,” he growled. “You know how many times I pictured you like this? In my dreams, you look like this when you come.”

  “Taran, I’m so hot. I can’t—please…”

  He groaned and shuddered, for the first time clearly struggling to maintain his own control while driving her into frenzy. When he stood to unbutton his jeans, she reached up to stop him.

  “Me. Let me,” she said hoarsely. He stilled, panting, gazing at her with an adoration even her sweetest dreams had never envisioned, and she undid each snap with trembling fingers. She ran her palms across the hard, flat expanse of his abdomen, her thumbs stroking his obliques, and she smiled when his muscles spasmed and jumped beneath her hand. His hips jerked, and he grabbed her wrists with a ragged laugh.

  “Baby, don’t,” he said unsteadily. “Don’t make an alpha embarrass himself.”

  Her mouth went dry and she moaned, tugging the jeans over his hips to free his long, engorged cock. The velvety smooth shaft seared her skin as she ran her hands down the length of it, tenderly caressing the head as she watched his face. Taran closed his eyes, taking quick, shallow breaths. The vein in his jaw jumped erratically, his neck and shoulder muscles taut and strained. She would never forget the sight of him like that, or the fierce euphoria of knowing she did it to him. When she tried to take him into her mouth, he pushed her back.

  “No way.” He laughed raggedly, “I’ll never make it.”

  “Taran,” she pleaded, “Now.”

  He stripped her pants off in one fluid motion. With that same wicked smile, he picked up her foot and gently kissed her ankle with his open mouth. Then her calf, then her knee, and then he stopped kissing and just ran his mouth the rest of the way up, and she writhed, shivering with pleasure as his whiskers abraded the soft skin of her inner thighs.

  He put his hands beneath her ass and lifted her sex up to his mouth. He licked slowly once, twice, and took her clit in his mouth to suck. Her fingers dug into the plush couch cushions and she held on for dear life as he pulled and licked and teased, and when his tongue dove into her passage she almost levitated off the couch. Her heels dug into his hard back and she screamed as his greedy tongue probed and swirled. She drew in short, shallow gulps as her climax built and she ground her hips against his mouth, desperately pleading for release.

  “Oh God, Taran, I—” She sobbed, and she screamed, and she came. And she kept coming, harder and for longer than she could ever remember as his mouth never left her clit, relentlessly riding the waves of her climax until she shattered.

  Before she could draw another breath, he pulled her off the couch and onto his lap as he sat back on the floor. Still weak and shaky from the aftershocks of her orgasm, she steadied herself on her knees as he guided his cock into her. She moaned his name softly as she impaled herself on the full, rigid length of him, and he filled her.

  “I can’t…”

  His tongue laved the hollow of her throat. He began to thrust. “You can’t what, baby?” he asked in a voice so low she strained to hear it.

  “I can’t believe you’re inside me,” she sighed, and they moved together, his hot hands on her ass holding her tight as he drove into her, each thrust harder and longer than the last, and she murmured little aching cries of need while he fucked her harder and faster.

  He reached down to stroke her clit with his thumb, and even though she knew she couldn’t come again, not so soon after that earthquake, she did. A sweet little orgasm rocked her softly and she wrapped her arms around his head, his face buried in her neck.

  He pumped hard a few more times. Then he too shuddered and came, more quietly but powerfully. Her heart soared at the way he softly shouted her name, squeezing her so tightly she lost her breath. He fell back on the carpet with her atop him, and they didn’t move or speak for a long, long time.

  Eventually, when she could breathe again and it felt like her mouth might work, she cleared her throat and whispered against his neck, “I thought I’d had sex before, but maybe I was wrong.”

  He lay on his back with one arm flung across the carpet, his other hand roaming her back, and she heard his smile as he said sleepily, “I’d kinda forgotten about it myself.”

  “What?” Her hand stilled on his stomach. “Do you mean you don’t—I mean, you haven’t been…”

  With an odd, sardonic laugh he said, “I haven’t been a busy wolf lately, no.”

  She kept quiet, so as not to let on how he’d flabbergasted her. Taran had had women, and spare women, stashed around the city as long as she could remember. He never had steady girlfriends, and he’d never shacked up with anyone, but the idea of an even temporarily celibate Taran just didn’t compute.

  “Well,” she lightly, “I guess it really is like riding a bicycle, huh? Hey. You taught me to ride a bicycle, didn’t you?” Long, uncomfortable pause. “Not that we need to think about that right now. It’s kind of squicky to think about, isn’t it. I mean, you taught me how to ride a horse, too, and…wait.” She felt him shaking beneath her; she was pretty sure he was laughing. “Shit.” She sighed. Yeah, he was laughing. “God, I’m babbling. Make me stop babbling.”

  “Okay,” he said softly, and rolled her onto her side, sliding his hand up into her hair and kissing her, slow and deep and gentle. She nibbled along his chin and jaw, because the feel of his stubble beneath her tongue made her tingle. He groaned contentedly and pulled her close, tucking her head beneath his chin.

  “We need to get off the floor.”

  She snuggled against him. “I don’t think I can walk yet. And I like the fire.”

  “Okay. Couch then.”

  “No, I don’t wanna get up…” she whined as he stood up, and she whooped in surprise when he reached down and scooped her up. He slid in under her on the enormous sofa and pulled a fleece throw blanket over them.

  She lay warm and drowsy between Taran’s burning body and the blanket, and as her hand drifted lazily across his stomach, and his hand softly wandered through her hair, she remembered a game she had played with herself as a young girl. When she found herself somewhere she really wanted to be, or doing something she loved doing, or just feeling generally elated, she’d hold her breath and pretend that as long as she didn’t breathe, time would stop and that moment would last as long as she wanted. She distinctly remembered playing the game a
s late as the age of twelve, when Taran taught her to ride a horse. He was a twenty-two year old Army Ranger, home on leave, and her worship of him approached idolatry. She didn’t fall in love with him for another five or six years, but that afternoon at the stable in Sugar Land had been a harbinger of the longing she’d carried for him ever since.

  “Lark?” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “You okay?”

  “I think so. It’s just weird.”

  After a moment he asked, “Weird good, or weird bad?”

  The big badass alpha sounded a little scared. She wanted to throw her arm around him and reassure him; but to do that would be to acknowledge his insecurity, and one didn’t do that with alphas. She certainly couldn’t tell him she loved him. So she said simply, “Weird good, of course, but still weird.”

  “Okay. I just don’t want you to regret it.”

  She laughed softly. “Never.”

  She thought he’d fallen asleep when he said, “I’ve thought about this a long, long time.”

  “I have, too. For years.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, really. Why?” Rising up on her elbow to smile down at him, she ran a fingernail over his ribs till he laughed. “I told you there were things you didn’t know about me,” she said more seriously.

  “Like what?”

  “Like, you gave me my first orgasm.”

  “Lark!” he exclaimed tenderly, and put a hand to her face. “Baby, I didn’t know you’d never—”

  “Not tonight!” She laughed, dropping a kiss on his broad chest. She lingered there, distracted by the sweet salty flavor of the smooth brown skin, and her fingers skipped across the top of his washboard abs. She grinned as his cock, just below her hand, began to notice.

  “Lark,” he said in a low voice, and grabbed her hand. “Your first orgasm…?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She kissed his ear and slid her leg between his, his cock hard and hot against her skin like a curling iron. “I was sixteen or seventeen when I figured out how to masturbate. The first time I got off, I was thinking about you.”