She shifts in my arms, turning her body to face mine. I see the surprise on her face when she finds I am fully awake and staring at her. “Good morning,” the gruffness of my voice makes her shiver though she tries to hide it.
“Cold?” she closes her eyes and I can almost imagine her rolling them as she has so many times before. I know the way I affect her, I get beneath her skin with a simple smile, or a phrase. It’s an uncontrollable reaction she has to me and I love it.
“I think you already know I’m not cold,” lifting her hands upward she places them to my bare chest and carefully glides them over me. I don’t take my eyes off hers just allow her to explore while fighting myself to remain in control.
“You are frisky this morning,” I whisper with a smile. Instead of responding, she shifts in closer to me and kisses along the base of my neck. My body grows tense. “How did you sleep?” Distraction, I need to distract her.
“Taryn,” her name is more of a whisper as I try to remain calm. But she doesn't stop. Slowly she nudges me onto my back. As soon as I’m flat on it she crawls over me. She straddles my waist, and I can feel her heat pressing against me. I have never in my life been so desperate to feel a woman, to be buried inside of her. I swear that Taryn is already a part of me. “Baby, we shouldn't” I am trying to be an admirable man, but my words are stopped when her lips collide with mine.
Shifting her hips against mine I get lost in the friction she’s creating. I can feel her growing wet and it pleases me. I moan against her lips as our kiss intensifies. My hands roam over her body, palming her breasts, pinching her nipples. She pushes down harder grinding her pussy against me and suddenly my hands are at her waist.
My own hips lifting to meet hers, matching her thrust for thrust. The way she moves only solidifies the fact that this woman will be the most amazing lover. “I want you,” she practically begged which only made it harder to resist.
“In time.” I realize the second she feels disappointed because her movements stop. I reach up and cup the sides of her face with my hands. “The first time I have you, we won’t have a guest in the house. I don’t want to hold back Taryn, and I don’t want my friend to hear you crying out from the pleasure I give you. Those cries are for me. When you scream my name and in turn, I express how unbelievable you make me feel that will only be for us, no one else gets the privilege of knowing those things, but us.”
She stares at me, her body so wound up with need that it's next to impossible not to go against everything I just told her.
“Then kick her out.”
I chuckle, my girl is needy. “Today we talk.” I can’t take her unless she knows all there is about my life. “I need you to know everything, and then if by the end of that you still want me the way you want me now, you’ll have me.”
The aroma of coffee lingers throughout the kitchen as I continue to cook breakfast. It is the nerves coursing through me, the need to do something other than wait that had me making practically everything I had in the refrigerator. Rowan sits at the bar beside me, both of us pondering over the magnitude of the impending conversation. Today I tell Taryn everything, which means today is the day that I could lose her, or have her forever. It's terrifying, crippling even.
“Do you think she’ll stay?” Rowan asks.
“She stayed when she found out I’m a shifter.” I pause, remembering how she hid out in her cabin for a couple of days but eventually she accepted it. “I guess I’m optimistic that the rest will be okay too.”
“Optimistic my ass Merick, you’re terrified.”
Rowan is right, I am scared out of my mind.
“But you can’t put it off any longer. The fifteenth of February is only a couple of months away.” Taryn’s birthday. “She’ll be twenty-five and—”
I see movement in the doorway and my heart feels as though it sinks in my chest. Taryn steps out of the shadows and the way that she is shifting her eyes back and forth between Rowan and myself I know she heard everything we’d said to one another.
“What happens on my twenty-fifth birthday?”
I shoot an irritated glare at Rowan. “Taryn, come sit down.”
“What happens on my birthday?” She ignores the way I motion toward the chair on the opposite side of the bar.
My fear grows more intense.
Suddenly Rowan is on her feet moving to Taryn.
“Ro,” I walk around the island and pause when I hear Rowan begin.
“Legend says that the chosen one must conceive her first child, a gifted child, by her twenty-fifth birthday. Our world was destroyed and so many were lost that very few of us are left. Those that held the greatest gift, the ability to recreate our world, are gone. The only one left, the only one that holds that key is Merick, and you, Taryn, are the chosen one.”
Taryn’s eyes grow wide as she seeks me out once more. A fear, one I’ve never seen before, is written all over her face.
I know without a doubt her head is spinning.
Backing away, she reaches out to brace herself on the frame of the large open doorway. I see how unsteady she has
