Chapter 45
JAMIE
I’ve always been clumsy. I tried to get into sports in elementary school, but it was a disaster. Always too gangly, limbs going this way and that.
But not now. Now I’m bounding through the garden, hands and feet digging into the dirt, and I twist and spring off a tree with all the ease of walking.
It doesn’t feel like a new shape.
It feels like all my life I’ve been wearing somebody else’s skin, and now I’m me.
Like my brain has always been wired for this body, and I’m only now finding out.
Like I was born for this.
My ears swivel, marking the birds that flutter away ahead and Morgan’s quiet footfalls behind me.
She’s fast.
But I’m faster.
I spill downhill into the sprawling gardens, avoiding the path and the crunch of the gravel, sticking to the grasses and bushes where my instincts keep me weaving, ducking, flowing. The forest beyond calls, and I answer.
I think this is what a runner’s high is supposed to feel like.
As I surge into the dense trees, Morgan’s footsteps go quiet, and I thrill with pride, knowing that I’m putting more and more distance between us.
I leap across the basin of a waterfall, diving into shadows on the other side of dusk.
Then there’s a split second where I see her, pouncing from the darkness, before the wall of muscle and claws that is Morgan Hunter collides with me and tackles me to the ground.
For once, I don’t panic. I was moving fast enough that her grip isn’t secure yet, and I get my feet under me and wriggle away.
I bound two paces before her leap overtakes me again, claws grasping my shoulders, yanking me down to the ground.
We roll, crashing through a row of bushes, each scrambling for the upper hand. She’s stronger, but I’m quicker, and I keep slithering away at the last second, my slender wrists slipping through her grip.
She pounces again, making a cage around me with her hands and knees.
I twist and kick, gaining leverage and clawing at Morgan’s chest before her hand catches one wrist and then the other, pinning them above my head.
I pull my feet up and get one against Morgan’s chest, pushing hard, but her hand around my wrists doesn’t budge. We grapple again, and my newfound strength makes her work for it, but every time I think I’ve made some room for myself, she closes in tighter.
I yank and tug and claw against her, but she’s iron. Her claws pierce my skin, tearing as I struggle, releasing the coppery tang of blood into the air. It feels too good to stop, like there’s an itch I’ve spent my whole life trying to scratch, and it’s deep, deep under my skin.
My stomach flips, and that runner’s high turns to straight heat.
Finally, I can’t move anymore, and I lie there panting, face down in the dirt, Morgan’s breath washing over my back. She pins my wrists overhead, and her shins brace into my calves, keeping my legs spread. She’s so much heavier than me, I have no hope of escaping now.
No quip finds my tongue, nor any word at all—just a primal growl as I continue struggling.
Because it’s not about escaping.
It’s about being absolutely, deliciously sure that I cannot.
Morgan lets out a low snarl that sends my back arching as she grinds her hips against my ass, her cock quickly growing along the small of my back.
Where before Morgan was all control and torment, now she is primal, aching need.
She drives into me with no warning. My ass is still slick from earlier, and she slides easily in. Her knot is only starting to rise, so it drags through my rim, igniting fireworks in every nerve.
I try to pull away and predictably fail.
Morgan lets out a possessive growl that does something deep and chemical to my brain.
Her fangs drop to my collar, biting hard, and the pressure is too much to bear. Not because of my breathing, which comes out in choked gasps, but because of the needy, visceral ache at the base of my neck.
Bathing in the light of the full moon, shifted, fucked—my body aches to be claimed. The only thing that will relieve the pressure is Morgan’s fangs deep in my neck, and it’s the one thing I can’t have.
A strangled, desperate moan pours from my chest, and Morgan fucks me harder, driving into my prostate and coiling my heat.
I don’t want this to be over. I want Morgan to lose it, I want her to finally break through the collar, to tear it away, to give me what I need.
But the tragic irony of my life is I get off on denial.
Morgan releases my hands and braces against the ground to fuck me harder, but my arms remain limp where she left them. I’m not trying to escape her anymore—I’m trying to escape my own climax.
I force deep breaths, fight the urge to clench around her, and try to angle my hips so she’s hitting somewhere else, anywhere other than that perfect, mind-breaking spot.
Morgan’s knot continues to drive through my rim as it swells, slowly stretching me more and more, sending fire up my spine.
I can’t. I can’t take it, I can’t hold out anymore, I can’t resist Morgan. My breathing hitches, I clench hard around her, my heat bursts, and I’m cumming.
The tightening of my ass locks Morgan mid-stroke.
She howls with frustration, yanking hard against my inner walls and sending my eyes rolling back, until the pressure is enough to push her over the edge.
But she doesn’t stop. She hardly slows. Her teeth tighten around my neck with a frustrated snarl, as if her body knows, too. Knows what should be happening, and it isn’t happening, why isn’t it happening…
I cum hard again, so intense I almost black out.
I resist every climax that follows, each one draining a little more of my heat away, each one bringing the end of this chance that much closer.
My body is starting to understand. It’s not going to happen. Flush out the hormones, try again next month.
I can’t exactly complain. Bliss ripples out from my core, and I’m floating, tingling with energy, like every afterglow of my life compounded all at once.
My desperate clawing and gasping turns to low, contented moans. Every sensation is ecstasy. All the tension from Morgan’s torments, from my sprint, from my desperation to be claimed, drains out, leaving light and warmth in its wake.
Morgan slows and shudders through one last climax, and I’ve never felt anything sweeter than the throbbing of her cock, the fullness of her. I’d do anything to experience this sensation again.
Quiet and darkness settle over the garden, bringing with them the chirp of crickets and the gentle glow of fireflies. I couldn’t care less that I’m lying in the dirt.
After a long silence that I’m too blissed out to break, Morgan asks me, “How do you feel?”
It takes a moment for my vocal cords to work again, voice hoarse as I finally speak. “Good. You?”
“Yeah… Exhausted…” She gives a weary laugh. “Add another surprise to the list. I never thought you’d be able to tire me out.”
“I did?”
“You made it over two miles. And this ass is unrelenting…” Her knot throbs. “God, you kept milking it out of me…”
My softening cock manages one distinct twitch, then gives up.
“Sorry for running us onto the neighbor’s property…”
“Hardly,” Morgan chuckles. “I own all of this.”
“Are you going to make that house even bigger?”
“No. I just don’t want neighbors. I actually bought someone out, tore down their house, planted trees.”
“That’s… kind of insane.”
“Would you rather be in someone else’s yard right now?”
“Fair enough.”
Morgan sighs, her exhale becoming a deep purr, and my remaining thoughts scatter as the soothing vibrations sweep through me, even more irresistible in this form.
I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until a tingling in my spine wakes me. My vertebrae pop, shortening slightly as I shift back to my human form.
Morgan stretches behind me as I stir. Her cock is already gone, replaced with a puddle of her cum under me, though the dirt has soaked up most of it.
I push myself to my feet, then wobble. My nerves are confused to find my heels on the ground, and my body seems unsure of how to keep the blood in my head.
Morgan steadies me, then scoops me into her arms and starts uphill.
“I can walk,” I say, wiggling to get down.
“Do you want to?”
“I…”
“Then shut up.”
I nestle into Morgan’s chest, looping my arms around her neck and pressing my cheek against her heartbeat.
Twenty minutes later, and we’re still walking. She wasn’t kidding about two miles.
“I really ran all this way?” I murmur, a little impressed with myself.
“You were brilliant,” Morgan says, and I glow.
Brilliant. It’s a ridiculous company motto, especially delivered so unironically. But now I get it. When Morgan Hunter calls you brilliant, the way it feels… I understand spending the rest of your life chasing that feeling.
Morgan holds me under an outdoor shower and cleans away the dirt and the mess without ever putting me down, then drapes an oversized towel around us and carries me through the house and back to her bedroom.
I already know it’s hers because of the attached closet, but I could have guessed.
First off, the room is massive, and the bed is even bigger.
Definitely not a standard size. There’s a vertical room divider with a fireplace set into it at the foot of the bed, and a well-used leather sitting area on the other side.
The outside wall is seamless glass, and the room juts out over an area of the garden lined with mature trees, giving the impression of floating in a magical forest.
Morgan doesn’t fuss with pajamas—she just pulls back the covers and settles us into bed.
I’ve never felt sheets this soft before. They’re not fuzzy-soft, like flannel or suede—they’re that perfect, smooth-soft of heavyweight cotton, and I wriggle deep into the nest of them.
Morgan slides her arm under me and pulls me against her chest.
If I weren’t so utterly exhausted, my last thought would have kept me awake.
What if my heat is over now?
What if this is the last time Morgan ever holds me this way?