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He laughed, that rich throaty sound that is purely male, and purely sexual. “We’re going to need another shower.”

“Whichever of us can walk first can have the first shower,” I said.

He laughed and hugged me. I wasn’t even sure my legs would work enough to shower at all. Maybe a bath.

38

I WOKE JUST enough to feel the weight of someone at my back. I snuggled against that warmth, wrapping sleep back around me. An arm spilled over my shoulder, and I wriggled into the circle of arm and body. It wasn’t the warmth, or the feel of him that woke me; the wereleopards had gotten me used to all that. It was the scent of his skin. By the scent alone, I knew it was Richard. I opened my eyes and snuggled deeper against him, curling that dark, muscled arm tighter around my body like drawing a cozy blanket around me. Of course, a blanket didn’t have the hard weight of Richard, or the silken glide of his naked skin against mine, or the ability to cuddle back, to use hands to pull my body tighter in against him. He closed the distance, worked until, even with the height difference, his chest, stomach, and hips were curled around me. He gave one last movement, and I could feel him pressed hard and ready against the back of my body. It was morning, he was male, but it wasn’t something embarrassing to be ignored. I could pay as much, or as little, attention to it as I wanted, and I wanted.

I started to roll over in the almost tight circle of his body and found I was stiff. My lower body felt bruised, aching, but in a good way. I laughed as he opened his arms enough for me to roll onto my back.

“What’s so funny?” Richard asked.

I stared up at him, still laughing, I think to keep from groaning. “I’m stiff.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “So am I.”

I blushed, and he kissed my nose, then my mouth, but still chaste, still not really sexual. It made me laugh. If it had been anyone but me, I’d have said I giggled.

The next kiss wasn’t chaste, and the one after that pressed me back against the bed. He slid his leg between my thighs, until his knee touched me, and I winced.

He drew back. “Are you too sore for this?”

“I’m willing to give it the ol’ college try,” I said, “but honestly, maybe.”

He stayed propped above me, fingers moving a lock of my hair from my cheek. “What I did last night would have broken things inside an ordinary human.”

I didn’t need a mirror to feel my eyes go cool. I’d really been trying not to think about it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.” He smiled suddenly and looked younger, more relaxed than I’d seen him in a long time. “I’m just glad to be with someone I don’t have to worry about hurting.”

I had to smile at him. “I’m not hurt, but we might have to try something a little more gentle this morning.”

The humor faded, and something else filled his eyes, as he lowered his face for another kiss. He spoke as he moved towards me. “I think we can come up with something.” He kissed my lips, then worked one kiss at a time down my neck, my shoulders. He got distracted at my breasts, covering them in kisses, his tongue licking a quick, wet line across one nipple. He cupped one breast in his hands, holding it in the circle of his warmth, sliding his mouth over the nipple, taking as much of the breast into his mouth as he could. He sucked me into his mouth until he held over half my breast in the wet warmth. And with that touch, the ardeur flared up through my body from wherever it had been hiding.

Richard drew back from my breast, hands still cradling it. “What was that?” There were goosebumps on his arms.

“The ardeur,” I said, voice soft.

He licked his lips, and I saw real fear in his eyes. “Jean-Claude told me about it, even let me feel his own version of it, but I didn’t really believe it. I don’t think I wanted to believe it.”

My beast had awoken with the ardeur, as if one hunger fed the other. I felt it uncurl inside me and stretch for all the world, like some great cat waking from a nap. It rolled through me,