I shake my head as the sleep slowly falls away.What is it? What’s wrong? I’m here in my bed, I’m in my room, and I’ve kicked off my pyjama bottoms in the night because I was hot, and there’s Warrick sleeping beside me, his arm thrown over me, his warm chest pressed against my back and his erection?—
No, not Warrick.
“Argh!”
I leap away from Rafe, dragging the blankets with me, which only means that his long, naked body is exposed. How did he shift back into a human, burrow under the covers behind me, and pull me against him without me even waking up?
A stripe of warmth flares across my stomach where his arm was resting, but it’s nothing compared to the heat immolating my cheeks.
“Argh!” Rafe hamster-wheels his feet. He yanks the covers back, and he’s stronger than me, so they rip from my hands, and now I’m the one who’s cold and completely, utterly exposed.
Eeep. I pulled off my pyjama top, too?
I’ve been in bed, naked, with Rafe? How did this happen?
I think my whole body is blushing.
Rafe freezes. His eyes rake over my body before resting on my face, and I don’t feel cold at all anymore.
“What happened to your bee pyjamas?” he asks.
It takes me far too long to answer because his tail is flicking with agitation and his cock isright there, bobbing between us, and I knew it was big, but now it’s long and hard and I can’t…I didn’t know they made them like that.
“Wh-what happened to ‘you can only stay the night if you stay in cat form’?” I growl back. The bees are back in my belly, doing their excited dance as I remember the feel of his hardness against the back of my thigh.
“It was an accident. I can’t always control when I shift! You let me climb under the covers to be warm, and then I shifted in my sleep and…”
…and then you put your arms around me, and you got hard…
We regard each other.
Rafe screws up his face, as if he’s physically in pain, and turns to face the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to make you feel unsafe.”
“I—”
I feel safe with you.
And that’s the problem.
I never should have let him stay here, in the bed that I’ve shared with Warrick for fifteen years. Precisely because of how safe he makes me feel.
“I’m sorry, too. I set us up for failure. I should have given you some blankets on the sofa.”
Why didn’t I do that?
At my words, Rafe recoils, as if someone’s slapped him.
“Here,” he mumbles, tossing the blankets at me. He grabs one of my decorative cross-stitch pillows – this one has a pattern of bees flitting around a gardening trowel – and places it over his, um,rather substantial appendage. I swallow. “We’ll just forget all about it. You can use the bathroom first. I promise I won’t look.”
He rolls over to face the wall, giving me a view of his cute little butt and the tail thumping against the sheets.
The ancient pipes take a long time to heat up, but today I don’t wait; I step straight under the frigid water, hoping that it will shake off the warmth pulsing through my veins and the dancing bees in my belly. I need the water to slough away the idea that maybe I like him looking at me.
I haven’t felt desired in a long time. Warrick was obsessed with me when we were trying to have a baby, but after we found out that I couldn’t, he turned cold in bed. He’s still affectionate, still has his arm around me in public always, still holds my hand, still needs his kiss before he leaves for work, but he hasn’t wanted sex in years.
And I think about those lines and lines of purchases in his secret bank account, the sexy lingerie and the hotel rooms, and I hate him with an intensity that has me gripping the bottle so tight that lotion shoots to the ceiling, and suddenly the boiler kicks in and the water turns scalding, and I yelp and leap out.
Rafe is gone when I step out of the bathroom, wrapped in three towels. I dress quickly in a maxi skirt and a t-shirt of a green man from last year’s Midsummer Festival, and pad downstairs. Something catches the corner of my eye. Something different about the sitting room?—
