Rejected Mate (Feral Shifters 1)

I toss the pills into my mouth and lean down to drink from the faucet. The water’s nasty—filtered with chemicals, nothing like the fresh, delicious well water back home. When I stand back up, I confront my reflection again, my lips peeling back from my teeth.

I tug a handful of dried leaves and twigs from my long dark brown hair, leaving them in a fun pile on the countertop like I’m the Blair Witch. Turning my face to the left, I run my finger beneath a raw red scratch on my right cheekbone. Another cut, deeper than the first, is angled above my eye and through my eyebrow.

Like the scar on Kian’s face.

Even now, I can conjure up a vision of his face. The scar bisecting his brow, his sardonic grin, the hard glitter in his unique eyes. I hate how I can remember him in such perfect detail all these years later. Memories of our night together have been assaulting me since he showed up at Joe’s earlier, never far from the edges of my mind.

Fury sets my blood boiling. I rip my t-shirt off over my head and step out of the shorts, then slam the faucet on in the shower. I climb beneath the surprisingly strong stream before it’s fully hot, and I turn my face into the cool water, cringing as it burns my cuts.

Feeling his skin against me in the woods brought every satin memory of his body on mine back to life. I don’t want to remember how right the weight of him feels on me. I don’t want to breathe in lingering traces of whiskey and woodsmoke. I want to forget all of that. How can I kill him if I can’t stop remembering the way he completed me?

Steam heats up the tiny bathroom. I unwrap the shitty motel soap and scrub at every inch of my skin, trying to rid myself of his scent. No matter how hard I scrub, e

ven if I use my nails just short of drawing blood, I can’t get myself totally free of him.

I can still feel him everywhere. His hands on my body back in Montana. His skin on mine in New Mexico. It all blurs together. There’s no line between pleasure and pain anymore.

Finally, I rinse off all the soap and turn off the water. While the faucet slowly drips into the pooling water, I dry off with anger still bubbling beneath my skin.

It keeps me warmer than any shower ever could.

After throwing on an oversized t-shirt and boy shorts to sleep in, I slip between covers that smell like industrial detergent. Bland. Bleachy. Void of life. I reach over my head and turn out the light, casting the room into total darkness.

Somewhere nearby, a horn honks. The swish of cars on the road continues like my entire world hasn’t been rocked off its foundation.

I found him.

I found Kian.

The man I’ve been hunting all this time.

His face haunts my mind and his body haunts my memories as I fall asleep.

Every nerve-ending in my body is buzzing, every inch of me both exhausted and insatiable.

Kian has already made me come three times, but the feel of his body draped over mine, his cock sheathing itself in my core over and over again, is pushing me toward another soul-stealing climax.

His cock drives into me with punishing thrusts, and he rests his forehead against mine as we both gasp for breath. I feel the warmth of his exhales on my lips, and I strain forward to kiss him once as our bodies rock together on the bed. The sound of the bed frame hitting the wall is a sharp punctuation to the smoldering heat building inside me.

My heart is racing, and so is Kian’s.

I can feel it.

I can feel the heavy thud of each beat where his chest presses against mine, but more than that… I can feel it in my soul. The two of us are joined so closely together in this moment that the line between our two separate selves seems to blur.

There’s no him, no me.

Just us.

My body goes tight as another orgasm looms over me, and I can feel sweat dripping down my temple and dampening the back of my neck.

“Almost there, baby,” Kian murmurs. “So fucking close.”

“Me too,” I gasp. “Please. Kian, fuck, please…”

His forehead presses harder against mine, and our gazes are locked. In this moment, nothing else exists but his dark brown eyes ringed with that startling gold.

But then something draws my attention away from him. Not a flash of movement I see or a sound I hear. Just a… a feeling.