They’d certainly get an eyeful. Kenzie’s head went back once more, her hair brushing her shoulders, the silken touch of it erotic. Just as erotic was Bowman, now gripping her thighs, his fingers tight on her soft flesh. Her breasts moved with their rhythm, and every time she looked down at Bowman, he caught her gaze in his strong one and held it.
He was holding her with his gaze when Kenzie’s climax overtook her. She forgot about being gentle and ground away at him as wave after wave of joy flooded her.
Bowman snarled—a long wolf snarl, the sound tearing out of his throat. The next moment, Kenzie felt his seed flood her, the life of a strong male Shifter filling her and completing her.
Perhaps another cub would come of this, Kenzie thought in hope as she collapsed on top of him. Bowman caught her, his arms coming around her to cradle her and keep her safe. A cub, she repeated to herself muzzily. She longed for that most of all.
* * *
Kenzie was heavy on top of him, and Bowman’s leg itched like crazy, but no way in hell was he going to push her away.
The most beautiful thing in the world was Kenzie stretched out on him, her dark golden eyes half closed in afterglow, her tight body relaxed in a way she didn’t relax any other time. She was a fine armful, her breasts cushioned against his chest, their heartbeats on top of each other’s.
Bowman held his breath, waiting for the warm spike in his heart that other Shifters had told him about, the almost-pain that meant he and his mate were bound forever.
It didn’t come. It never had. Exhaustion was there—he and Kenzie always tore it up in the bedroom—but the mate bond eluded them. The Goddess testing them, maybe? Telling Bowman he wasn’t building enough bonfires to the God or meditating hard enough?
Whatever reason the God and Goddess and the wide universe had for denying Kenzie and Bowman the mate bond, it hurt. He knew it hurt Kenzie too—she was simply good at hiding it. Their Shifters also weren’t happy that their leaders shared no bond. Instability could come of that, and they knew it.
Kenzie raised her head and looked down at him. Bowman saw the sorrow in her eyes, knowing she was searching for the bond and not feeling it either.
Instead of comforting her with words, which Kenzie wouldn’t want—she never wanted to talk about it—Bowman stroked her hair. He loved the color of it—dark brown with golden streaks, like the sun on polished walnut.
“I need your report, Kenz,” he said softly. Getting back to business would calm them both. “What did you find out this morning?”
Kenzie snuggled down to him again, which did nothing to help Bowman’s continued hard-on. The last thing he wanted was to talk about the terror of last night, but they couldn’t blow it off. A danger existed that they had to find and destroy.
His hardness deflated a bit, however, as she described the creature’s disappearing scent and her and Jamie’s conclusion that it had been shoved into a semitruck and hauled away.
“By other Shifters?” Bowman asked, still smoothing Kenzie’s hair.
“We couldn’t tell,” she said.
“I know. I’m thinking out loud. Or by humans? And why?”
Kenzie pressed a warm kiss to his throat. “I was more interested in the how. What was that thing? Was it real?”
“It was real.” Bowman flexed his toes and grimaced. “It tore up my leg, smashed Cade’s truck, and laid out half the Shifters of Shiftertown.”
“You know what I mean. I hear people can build some cool robotics, but it wasn’t mechanical. We’d have scented that.”
“That leaves something born and bred. Remember what happened to Tiger.”
Tiger was a Shifter now living in the Austin Shiftertown. He’d been bred by humans using an experimental process Shifters still didn’t understand. The experiments hadn’t gone well, however—all the artificially inseminated Shifters had died except Tiger, who’d been the twenty-third attempt. The researchers had abandoned him, leaving him alone in a cage, barely fed, for years, and he’d pretty much gone insane.
But Tiger, while he was big and powerful and larger than most Felines, was still more or less normal size for a Shifter. After he’d been freed, he’d taken a human mate, a woman named Carly, and Carly so far had no complaints.
Shifters had originally been created by the Fae a couple thousand years ago. Genetic engineering had been invented in Faerie far sooner than humans had figured it out, but it had been blended with magic, as everything in Faerie was.
The Fae had merged humans with big, powerful animal predators—Bowman didn’t really want to know the details of how they’d done it—and produced Shifters, creatures with human reason and pure animal instinct.