“Hell yeah, Thistle. It’s been two weeks, and I’ve finally got you back. Eat fast or I’ll jump you right here on this rickety table.” Tobias’s eyes twinkled with amusement as she gulped and nodded.
They ate in silence as she tried to build up the courage to voice her fears. In the bath earlier, when she’d scrubbed her skin to shining and washed the leaves from her matted hair, she’d worried over how Tobias would see her now. They’d been so good together before the Change, but now she didn’t know where his head was at.
Gulping her last bite of carrots, she set her silverware down gently and admitted, “I was kind of nervous you wouldn’t want me intimately anymore.”
Tobias reared back as though he’d been slapped. “Why?”
“Well, because I’m not in heat anymore, and you saw me as her. My fox isn’t exactly a sex-pot, and if I remember correctly, she killed and brought you three rabbits. Poor little limp bunnies. I just assumed that wasn’t a turn-on.”
“Nah, you’re looking at it all wrong. One, your heat doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m attracted to you, not what you smell like, and two, you see it as killing a bunny and making a pointless gesture. But do you know how hard it is to pull yourself off a kill when you are an animal?” He dropped his attention to his steak and began to cut it up. “It’s nearly impossible unless you have a really good reason not to eat your prey. And your fox stopped herself from eating just so she could bring her catch to me. That is the biggest gesture of devotion for our kind, so no, I didn’t see it as a turn-off.” He lifted steady green eyes to hers. “It made me care for you more.” His pupils contracted just before he ripped his gaze away and gritted out, “Now finish your potatoes, woman. I can’t stand thinking you’re hungry.”
“Bossy,” she murmured, sliding her fuzzy sock-clad foot up his leg under the table.
Tobias tensed the second she reached his thick erection, standing at attention behind the seam of his jeans. He gripped his fork and knife, seemingly determined to ignore her, but he jerked and scraped the knife hard across the plate when she stretched her foot up his shaft.
She swallowed a giggle as he leveled her with a calculating look. “I don’t think this rickety old table would hold my weight, much less yours.”
“Mmm,” he rumbled, rolling his eyes back in his head as she pulled her foot back down him.
“I’m wearing my llama pajamas tonight for you.”
Tobias chuckled and linked his hands behind his head, leaning back in his creaking chair. “Don’t tease me, woman.”
Vera slid from her chair and crawled around the table, stifling a grin. “Bark, bark, I’m a sexy fox.”
“Foxes don’t bark.” Tobias was biting back his amusement. “You’re going to get splinters in your knees.”
“I will not get—ow!” she said, feigning pain. Tobias didn’t even flinch. “No reaction?” she asked.
“I’m onto your tricks.”
With a dramatic sigh, she rested the back of her hand on her forehead and murmured, “Take me to our shed now, lover. I’m ready for you.”
Tobias’s shoulders shook with laughter as he scooped her up. “Well, Thistle,” he said as he kicked the door open and walked out into the night air with her cradled to his chest, “I have a feeling life with you will never be boring.”
“It will if I stay a fox.” She hadn’t meant to sound melancholy and ruin the moment. After he strode around the cabin in silence, she murmured, “I’m sorry.”
Tobias pushed the door of the shed open and settled her on her feet. Cupping her face, he said, “Your animal let you out when I needed you. She’ll do it again.”
“I’m scared of Changing back. I’m scared I’ll lose myself forever.”
He shook his head, his eyes pooling with sympathy and understanding. “You won’t.”
“But how do you know, Tobias? How can you be sure? I lost two weeks like it was nothing. And where was I? Sleeping? Did I just not exist? I hardly remember anything, and I’ve tried. I wasn’t present, Tobias. I was nothing.”
“It won’t be like that forever. Your animal just blocked you, like you blocked her with those meds. But you suppressed her for years. She only took two weeks from you.”
Vera sat heavily on the cot against the wall. Now she felt awful. Her “cure” had done that. Made her animal feel non-existent. Her face fell, and her eyes burned with tears. She couldn’t meet Tobias’s gaze anymore.
“Talk to me.”
She shook her head because she couldn’t. Talking hadn’t ever solved anything for her. He would only pity her, and she didn’t want him feeling sorry. She wanted him to care for her as much as she cared for him. He was a big, strong, mentally capable bear shifter—the king of their kind—and she was nothing but a broken fox.