Hit List

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