“Yeah. There are things you don’t know, Ember. Dangerous things. Things you might not be okay with.”
“Are you about to tell me you have a sex dungeon and that you want to tie me up or something?”
He laughed, deep and loud. It made her heart skip a few beats. “No, nothing like that.”
“Okay, then what?”
“This isn’t the right time for that conversation.”
Ember cupped his face in her hands. “Kai, you just fucked me senseless. If you have bad news to tell me, this is kind of the opportune time. I’m all sexed out and in perfect bliss.”
His smile was small, but the uncertainty she saw there made her uneasy. She kissed his lips softly.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
He sighed, the movement so profound it made the bed shake under them. “I had planned on telling you later. When we knew each other better.”
She shook her head. “Now, I’m worried. Do you have a wife and kids?”
“No, of course not.”
“Did you just use me for sex?”
“No.” That time, the word was angry, as if the mere suggestion of it was ludicrous.
“Did you poke a hole in the condom?”
“Ember,” he warned, exasperated.
“What? The more you repeat no with no further explanation, the more preposterous my guesses will be. Like, are you an alien from another planet, come to give great sex to the woman of Earth so that they never want to fuck humans again and only your breed?” She snorted at her own silliness.
“Something like that,” he whispered.
“What?” she balked. “Come off it.”
Kai sat up, pulled her toward him until she sat in his lap. “Let me just get through this.” He was silent until she nodded at him. “I’m a shifter. A lion shifter, to be exact. That is a breed of humans who can turn into an animal.” Kai dropped a hand in her lap, palm up. Slowly, the smooth skin of his hand sprouted thick gold fur. Long, hooked talons replaced his fingers.
Ember was stunned, shocked. Terrified and exhilarated. She could only blink at Kai, not trusting herself to say anything that wasn’t a pure shout of surprise.
“Shifters like me have heightened senses. Even in our human form, like I’m right now, I have extraordinary hearing, sense of smell, and instincts honed by generations of shifters before me. One of those instincts is how we sense our soulmate. The person who is meant for us. It’s an instant connection. Sort of like love at first sight, though that pales in comparison to it. It’s visceral and animalistic. I felt it the second I laid eyes on you.”
What.
The.
Fuck.
“You’re freaking out,” Kai stated as Ember leaped from the bed, taking the sheet with her.
“You’re a shifter,” she repeated, pointing to the lion’s paw that was somehow attached to his hand.
“Yes.”
“That — how is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. We exist. We don’t advertise it because humans tend to—” he swallowed hard.
“Freak out,” she finished for him.
“Yeah.”
“You have to admit that it’s pretty freak out worthy. You give me the best sex of my life, and then you drop this on me—”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you before anything happened. I just can’t resist you.”
His erect cock was proof enough of that. How the man could be hard so soon after the insanely vigorous sex, they had just had, was beyond her. Maybe that was a shifter thing? Was it impolite to ask?
“I don’t want to believe you, but that paw is proof enough.” Ember shook her head. She was stunned that she believed him, but it would be impossible to ignore the truth went it was right fucking there.
There was something else that was causing an issue for her.
The mate thing.
This man was convinced that they were mates — soulmate — after only a few hang-outs and sex?
This kind of thing didn’t happen. Not to her, anyway.
“Explain the mate thing again,” she commanded.
Kai nodded and repeated the explanation, answering her questions with the patience of a saint, naked as the day he was born. He made no move to cover himself up. It made focusing all the more challenging.
“So just like that, I’m supposed to just agree to be your mate?” That is exactly what she wanted. She knew it was wrong. That it was too soon. That it was crazy. But she really wanted to believe his words. He had said he was a lion shifter, and there his lion paw was.
So would he really lie about the mate stuff?
Probably not.
Ember needed to do something to regain control. If she had been in the kitchen, preparing a particular difficult pastry that was refusing to behave, she would pull up the recipe on her phone and go through all of the steps until she spotted the issue.
There was no recipe for dealing with men who could change into animals. Especially not when said men claimed to be your mate.
On a whim, and following a tiny voice in the back of her head, Ember walked right up to the bed, took Kai by the cock and squeezed. She felt unhinged, out of control. Kai hissed out a breath, his erection straining against her hand.
Maybe she could hold the appendage like a lie detector.
Not because she wanted him again — even though she did.
“Is this a ploy to fuck me?”
“Of course not.” He seemed genuinely insulted by the idea that he would use her.
“So, if I met another shifter, they would confirm the mate stuff?”
“Absolutely.”
“And we’re made for each other?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t accept this. I hope you know that.”
He gulped. “Okay.”
“If we’re mates, that means that we can date. Like a normal couple, and things will just — work out.”
Kai studied her carefully. “If you want to put aside the shifter side of me and the fact that we’re mates to date like humans do, that is what we will do. We will date. That is what mates do, anyway. The bond just gets stronger after the mating.”
When Kai explained what that was, Ember felt so dizzy, she could have passed out.
Could that be why she wanted the imprint of his fingers on her legs? Could that be why she had scratched him hard enough to leave a mark? Because somehow, her soul recognized him as her own?
It was entirely probable, but she wasn’t going to say that. No. She wanted to date Kai and fall in love with him the regular way. Not because his biology decreed it.
“It takes all the romance out of it,” she explained further to him once she had voiced her concerns. Did it? Or was she just scared by the intensity of her feelings?
“I understand. So, we will date. Not as mates, but as man and woman. Two people who enjoy spending time together.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated. “Ember,” he whispered. “You’re still holding my cock. Do you plan on doing something about it?”
She pretended to frown at him. “Like what?”
He didn’t use words to answer. Instead, he pushed her back down on the bed and proved once and for all that though her heart wasn’t his yet, her body sure was.