Primal Bonds (Shifters Unbound #2)(15)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Her breath was warm on his cheek, her hair mussed and spilling over her pillow. She smelled of sleep, damp and sultry, and the bed was a fine place of heat, where a Shifter male could curl up and be touched by his sweetheart of a mate.

“You’re a dangerous one,” Sean said. He thought about what Dylan had said about Andrea not respecting the hierarchy, and sure enough, Andrea was gazing straight into his eyes. No evasion of the submissive, no awkwardness, no hesitancy.

“Me? Dangerous?” Andrea shrugged. “It’s cold, and if you want to talk, this is the warmest place. Anyway, there’s nothing dangerous about me.”

“You’re dangerous, because you can make the Shiftertown leader’s baby brother dance to your bidding.”

A smile touched her mouth. “Do you? Dance to my bidding?”

“I’m dancing a jig right now, love.”

Her red lips curved. “You’re the dangerous one, Sean Morrissey. Here you are climbing through my bedroom window.”

“Because I was worried about you.”

“That’s what makes you dangerous.”

Her eyes were silver in the moonlight, her face a curve of marble. Her beauty did something to Sean’s soul, and her eyes looked deep into his heart. He was never going to survive her.

Sean smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek. “Tell me about the nightmares. Do you dream about Jared? The things he did? He can’t touch you by law, Andrea, you know that, now that you’ve been mate-claimed by me. Besides, I’ll kill him if he comes near you.”

“No.” Andrea’s mouth went tight, the pucker of the word remaining as she frowned. “The nightmares aren’t about Jared. They’re about—I think about what happened today.”

That surprised him. “What, you mean with Ely? The healing?”

“I think so. But … I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll be the judge.”

Andrea wet her lips, the moisture gleaming in the dim light. Sean remembered kissing those lips and the warmth and pressure of her mouth in return. Her br**sts pushed at the neckline of her pajama top, and his legs told him she wore no pajama bottoms.

“I see threads,” she said. “No, that’s not right. They’re more like wires, tangling me up, trying to smother me. I can’t get away. But whenever I heal someone, I also see threads. I’m not sure if I really see them or I just picture them to help me focus. Today I saw them coming from your sword, and I used them to help heal your cousin.”

Interesting. “But the dreams, they’re nothing about healing?”

“No. I don’t know what they are.”

From the worry in her eyes, he feared she did know, and that it wasn’t good.

“Something to do with the Fae?” Sean asked.

“I don’t know,” she repeated, voice sharp. She smelled of fear, anger, distrust.

Sean stroked her hair, calming her with his touch. He didn’t mind doing that for her, running his fingers through her silky hair, finishing the stroke on her cheekbone.

“You can trust me, sweetheart,” he said.

“Can I really?”

“Yes. My dad is shagging your aunt, probably right now. That makes us almost family.”

A slight smile rewarded him. “If we’re related, you can’t claim me as mate.”

“I didn’t say blood relation. I said family. Mate is the best kind of family.”

A sigh. “I wouldn’t know. My stepfather loved my mother, but his people never took to her. They were relieved when she died.”

“All deaths are grief,” Sean said, running his fingertips across her lashes. “For all Shifters. We all grieve.”

“You do, maybe.”

Goddess, she was so brittle. That was Andrea, brittle and fragile at the same time. She’d been hurt, and Sean wanted to erase that hurt. He wanted to wipe out her nightmares and destroy everyone who had ever caused her pain.

“You can trust us, Andrea,” Sean said. “You can trust me. Whenever you think you’re alone, you won’t be.”

Her expression softened, and she grinned. “Fine words from a man who climbed in through my window and got into my bed.”

Sean propped himself on his elbow. “You invited me to do the last bit, love.”

He let his fingers trail down her cheek to her neck, around the neckline of her pajama top, which came to a V below her Collar. He touched the Collar’s Celtic knot that rested against the hollow of her throat. He wished he could have seen her before the Collar had been fused to her skin to keep her tamed for humans. He could have pressed kisses down her neck to her shoulders, nuzzling in under her hair. He still could, but he longed to taste her, not the metal bite of the Collar.

She watched him while he touched her, gray eyes big. Many Lupines had gray eyes, but they were light gray, like Glory’s. Andrea’s were the color of deep smoke, of leaden skies over an Irish sea. Her lashes were dark, thick, and full, which went with her lush black hair. Black Irish, she’d be called where he came from. Dark hair and creamy skin, gray eyes that recalled the Sidhe, the Fae, the Fair Folk.

Fair bloody bastards. They’d created Shifters for their own pleasure, so Shifters could hunt for the Fae and entertain them. Animals that could turn human and back again, Oh what fun we can have with them! But they made Shifters too strong. Shifter had allied with Shifter, and they’d turned on their Fae masters and driven them back to Faerie. Good riddance.

Once in a while, a Fae emerged and coupled with a Shifter or a human to produce a half-Fae offspring. Those were the dangerous kind. The half Fae could live among humans—they weren’t as fragile as the full-blooded Fae who weren’t easy with all the iron now in use in the human world. Half Fae weren’t affected by iron, and they had that Fae charm. It had been a half-Fae human and his son who’d helped convince the human government that Shifters were dangerous and needed to be kept on a leash—the Collars had been the half-Fae human’s idea.

And now there was this half Fae, half Shifter. Andrea Gray, scared and angry, the Shifter-Fae war being fought inside her own body.

You can trust us, Sean had said. He’d really meant, You can trust me.

Andrea touched his throat, tracing Sean’s own Collar. Sean closed his eyes to enjoy. The feel of her light fingers around the edges of the Collar was erotic and enticing, and yet, he also loved simply bathing in her warmth and the scent of her.