FUR FOR ALL, Book 5 in FIXED (16 page)

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Her hands curled into fists and beat at his shoulders, and still he pressed her.

Up and up and up until she stopped coming down. Her climax had become one, huge, unending orgasm from which she couldn’t break free, because he was constantly there to drag her back. Her voice went hoarse from begging, but it seemed to make no difference. He had no mercy. He growled at her pleas and pushed her higher.

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Then, abruptly, she stopped struggling. The fight went out of her and she lay still on the sweaty, tangled sheets. Her thighs fell open, leaving her totally exposed. Her hands dropped to her sides and her eyelids fluttered closed. Her dry lips parted, and it was her whisper that brought him back to reason.

“I love you, Rafe.”

He froze, three fingers buried to the first knuckle inside her, tongue dancing across her clit. Her words flashed a lightning bolt of pride and fierce satisfaction inside him, and they brought him a new and unexpected peace.

Gently, he eased his hand away from her, sliding up the mattress until their bodies were aligned and he could take her into his arms, cradling her close.

Grasping her top thigh in his hand, he lifted it over his and pulled her hips 127

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against his until he could slip inside gently and easily. Her hands came up to push him away, but he refused her. He shushed her with soothing whispers and soft promises and rocked slowly against her, not thrusting, but reveling in the connection between their two bodies. When the climax came this time, it was the gentle ripple of a pond, no more violent than a heartbeat and just as natural.

He hugged her to him and tried not to panic.

Then he tried not to love her and panic became inevitable.

“Rafe,” she breathed.

“Shhh.” He brushed her hair away from her forehead, smoothing the tousled curls and pressing a soft kiss to the damp skin beneath. “I’m right here, my sweet Tess. Right exactly here.”

She slipped breathlessly into sleep, and he followed soon after, still joined, body to body, skin to skin, heart to heart.

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Chapter Fifteen

“East Village Apothecary. This is Tess. Can I help you?”

“Are you pregnant?”

Tess dropped a three-hundred-dollar bag of saffron on her foot. Luckily, it weighed less than a pound. “What?!”

“Are you pregnant?” Missy’s voice sounded breathless and very excited.

Even the phone lines couldn’t hide it. “I know it’s a weird way to start a conversation, and I’ll get to the hellos and how are yous later. First, I need to know if you’re pregnant.”

“What the hell kind of question is that?” She scooped up the bag—which had thankfully remained tightly sealed—and stuffed it back under the counter. She could divide it up later. When her heart stopped beating three hundred times a minute.

“The kind you need to answer. Just tell me, Tess. Pregnant. Yes, or no.” Her denial was instant, vehement and totally unfounded. “Of course not.” She hadn’t even considered the possibility. Because it was
impossible
. Ridiculous.

Laughable. Terrifying. “Why would you even ask me something like that?”

“Aside from the fact that you and Rafe have been fucking like rabid bunnies for seven and three-quarters of the last eight days?”

“For God’s sake, Miss! You don’t have to shout it.” She looked around at the Friday afternoon browsers in the shop as if she thought some of them might have overheard the other half of the conversation she was conducting on the cordless phone. Hell, Missy was yelling so loud, some of them might have. They all continued to shop, though, and she turned her back, heading for the small, semi-129

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private alcove where she usually did her tarot readings. Not that she’d done any since the one with Missy.

“Even if such a thing were remotely possible—which it isn’t,”
Please, God
!

“how the hell would I know? You said yourself, it’s only been eight days. It would take fourteen, minimum, before I even had time to skip a…period.” She hesitated and lowered her voice before she said that last bit. Bette was already eyeing her too warily from behind the lavender stalks.

“When you’re knocked up by a shapeshifter, you know. Come over. Now.”

“Now? Miss, I can’t just up and leave work in the middle of—”

“Now.”

“Missy, tonight is the meeting—”

“
Now
.”

Wow. Tess hadn’t realized the other woman could growl like that. She must have been taking lessons from her husband.

“Fine,” Tess said. “I’ll see if Bette minds closing for me. If it’s okay with her, I can leave in an hour, right after I—”

“Now.”

“All right! Sheesh. Give me thirty minutes—”

“
Now
.”

“It will take me at least fifteen, even if I hijack the first cab on the avenue.”

“
Fine
. But leave
NOW
!”

Sixteen minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Tess shoved her fare into the cabbie’s hand and leapt out of the taxi. Another three seconds later, she was pounding on the Winters’ door and wondering if maybe she needed to see someone about her blood pressure.

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Missy jerked the door open before the echo of the first knock faded and hauled Tess inside by the front of her shirt.

“Holy shit, Miss! What the hell do you do in your spare time? Bench press Volvos?” The blonde woman ignored her. She was too busy sticking her nose up against Tess’s neck and inhaling deeply. “What the hell…?” Missy jerked back, her eyes wide. She blinked up at Tess. “I don’t get it.

You’re not pregnant.”

Tess threw up her hands and contemplated joining a remote Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Someplace where everyone took vows of silence. And no sniffing. “I
know
I’m not pregnant. In fact, I tried to tell you so over the phone. So what
gives
?”

Missy just shook her head and turned, heading toward the same sitting room Tess had visited unwillingly last Wednesday night. “I really don’t get it. You have to be pregnant. There’s no other explanation.” Torn between offering to call Missy a doctor and trying to wring her neck, Tess gave an exasperated cry and chased after her.

“
What
don’t you get?” she demanded. “That I’m not pregnant? I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s a very good explanation for that. It’s called wild carrot seed. I’ve been taking the tincture since the first time your friend laid his grubby little paws on me!”

Missy stopped at the entrance to the living room and whirled around, one hand on her hip, the other curled around the shining brass doorknob. “That still,” she growled, “doesn’t explain
this
!” With impeccable timing, perfectly synchronized to her shout, Missy turned her hand and threw open the door to reveal three very confused looking women.

Who otherwise looked completely normal.

Tess blinked. “Um, oooookay. What do they have to do with anything? And who are they?”

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“They,” Missy stabbed a finger through the doorway, “are all pregnant. Just like you should be.”

“Huh?”

“Every single one of those women has gotten knocked up—in the past week—by a werecat.”

Tess’s head snapped around, searching for the nearest butcher’s knife. “You mean to tell me that Rafe—”

“No! Of course not. I didn’t mean Rafe
personally
got all these women pregnant.”

Tess watched the red haze recede.

“The fact that they’re all pregnant is definitely
your
fault.”

“Missy, I’m not sure how different the reproductive biology of the shapeshifting species is, but I only know of a limited number of ways to get pregnant, and they all involve at least two sexes…”

“Stop being such a moron. I wasn’t speaking biologically. I was speaking mystically. Magically. You know, like the stuff curses are made of.” Tess jerked back as if she’d just been stabbed with a hot poker. She almost wanted to check for singeing. “Whoa. Curse? As in Rafe’s curse? The one you ambushed me with last week?”

“It wasn’t an ambush. It was a strategic covert operation.”

“What are you? The Joint Chiefs of Staff?”

“That’s not the point. The point is that these three women are pregnant today because of you.”

Tess winced. “I really wish you’d stop saying it like that before one of them decides to sue me for child support.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t do that,” a tall, leggy blonde said in a breathless Marilyn Monroe voice. “We didn’t even know you existed until the Luna said something.

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We just came to report the upcoming births to the Felix. That’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”

Missy nodded at her, leading her to the sofa and urging her to sit. “You did just fine, Fawn. Everything is fine. Just sit here until Tess and I finish talking.” Tess tugged Missy back out into the hallway and looked into the living room with suspicious eyes. “Does carrying a shifter’s baby suck brain cells, or has she always been like that?”

“No, that’s just Fawn. We think she got her name because she’s about as smart as one. But do you see what I mean?”

“About what?”

“About it being your fault?”

“Missy! No, I do
not
see what you mean. I don’t even see what language you’re speaking.” She realized she was shouting and lowered her voice. “I am so beyond confused, I don’t even think I could find my way back with a map. Why does it matter that these three women are going to have kittens?”

“Didn’t you listen to anything we told you last week? Felines don’t just get women pregnant. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Actually, what you told me was that the birth rate was declining. Clearly it’s not dead yet, or the whole race would be extinct.” Missy growled in exasperation. She sounded a
lot
like Graham. “Yeah, but it’s been declining for hundreds and hundreds of years. Last year there were seven Feline births in New York. Seven! All year. And now we have three pregnancies in one
week
? What does that say to you?”

“Nothing!” Tess threw up her hands. “It says nothing to me, because I have no idea what you’re getting at! Last week you told me about a curse on the Feline shifters that said that couldn’t happen until a Felix stayed faithful to a witch for a year and a day. Rafe has only been with me for eight bloody days! And even if I 133

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have kept him too busy to sleep with anyone else, that’s still not enough time to undo your bloody curse! So what the hell are you trying to tell me?” The blonde woman took a deep breath and spoke again, slower and more softly this time. “I’m trying to tell you that maybe the legend is wrong. Maybe the year and a day thing isn’t really necessary. Maybe once
you
get pregnant, anyone can get pregnant. Or maybe Rafe only needs to fall in love with you to lift the curse. I’m not sure. But I am sure that you have something to do with the answer, and that’s why I dragged you all the way across town.”

“Missy, I can’t—”

“Just listen. I have a theory.”

“Miss—”

“Listen.” The Luna took a deep breath and began pacing. “I was thinking about it after lunch, while I was nursing Roark. See, until he’s weaned, I still have some Lupine abilities. Not like I did while I was pregnant, and not like a real Lupine, of course, but echoes of the things they can do. I love it. I’ll be sorry to stop nursing, because I know that’s when it will really fade away. See, at the moment, I have the most amazing connection to Graham. I can see things the way he does. I can smell them. It’s like looking at the world through Lupine eyes.

I mean, I know he still sees and smells and tastes things so much more clearly than me, but I’m only human. At least I get to see the echoes. And I got to thinking about that. About echoes, and the connection that forms between a shifter and a non-shifter when she’s carrying his child.” Tess sighed impatiently, but she listened.

“And I started to think maybe
that
was the secret to the curse,” Missy continued. “What if it wasn’t about being faithful to a non-Feline for a year and a day, but about having that connection to one. I figured, what if all the witch wanted was for a Felix to experience that connection to non-Feline, to become almost like the same person for the time that the witch he mated with was 134

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pregnant. That’s why I called to ask if you were pregnant. I thought you must be, if it had managed to lift the curse.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not.” Tess made a face. “Look, I know you’re only trying to help the Felines, and I do understand, Miss, but I just don’t have time for this right now. Tonight is the meeting of the Witches’

Council, and I need to get home and get ready to go with Rafe.” Missy sighed. “I know. I just got so excited when I thought I figured it out.” Tess reached out and hugged the other woman impulsively. “I know, and I appreciate it. And as soon as this business with the council is over, we’ll figure it out together, okay?”

Missy hugged her back. “If you say so. But I honestly thought I had it. I mean, if it’s not about Rafe knocking you up, what is it about?” 135

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Chapter Sixteen

Tess had just slipped on her most conservative pearl earrings when she heard Rafe let himself into her loft. She’d given him a key on Monday after he broke in twice over the weekend, but she’d been smart. She’d attached a small bell to the key chain so that she’d always be able to hear him coming.

Hearing the sound of the cheerful little bell, she shoved her feet into her kidskin pumps and stepped out from behind the screen that divided her bedroom area from the rest of the apartment.

“Hello, dear. How was your day?”

She felt very June Cleaver, meeting him at the door in pearls and a snappy dress, with her hair styled and heels on her feet, so she couldn’t resist the classic greeting. She was betting, though, that June never laid one on Ward like she was kissing Rafe. The censors would have had a field day. Case in point: the way he kneaded her ass before setting her away from him and reaching down to adjust the fit of his tailored charcoal trousers.