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I sniffed. “I feel like so much of my relationship with Nana was a lie now. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I’ve known all my life that my grandmother didn’t want to discuss my grandfather. And I thought I understood it. I’d been angry at my grandfather for years, imagining him as some sort of cad who fathered my mother and ran. But I realize now the part Nana played in all this, and I didn’t realize how angry I was at Nana Fee until I came here and saw what I had missed, not knowing him. She sent me on this wild-goose chase to the middle of nowhere, after giving supposedly sacred objects to a man who was some sort of book hoarder. What if Jane wanted nothing to do with me? What if his shop had burned down? What was she thinking?” That last bit was muffled by a hiccuping sob, which was mortifying.
“You’re not used to bein’ angry with her, huh?”
I shook my head, wiping at my cheeks. “I’m also not used to crying in front of some man while lying in bed with him.”
“I’m not just some man.” His tone was indignant. I chuckled, but he cupped my face in his hand and forced me to look at him. “Look, you know my secrets. You know things I’ve never told a soul outside of my family. And I gather you’ve never told anyone about your mother or your grandmother. That means something, Nola. I don’t take it lightly.”
I nodded and tucked my face into the crook of his neck. “I know.”
I settled my weight against Jed’s side and breathed in his spicy woods scent. I closed my eyes and let that scent soak into my skin. I knew Jed didn’t take this sort of admission lightly. This was an intimacy he was sharing with me, an emotional bond one didn’t forge with a convenient fling. The question was, how was I supposed to take it? How was I going to walk away from someone who knew so much about me? Did I really want to?
* * *
Hours later, the room was dark, and the windows were open. I turned over toward Jed. Bright beams of moonlight poured through the window, highlighting the smooth planes of his face. Jed’s completely normal, human face. I sat up, my fingers pressing against his cheeks.
He inhaled sharply, sitting up. The moment his eyes opened and he caught sight of the windows, his face shifted. His skin was blue and smooth. Inky black markings highlighted the sharp cheekbones and arched brows over a leonine nose. He had fangs, long, shiny, and white. His eyes were wide and round and an electric, unearthly green.
I reached out to touch the strange blue flesh but felt only Jed’s warm, smooth skin. I traced my fingertips along his long nose, over the ridges of his cheekbones. He purred, the vibrations of the rumbling sound traveling down my arms to my heart. It was an illusion. He was still Jed underneath. I could feel his eyebrows under my fingertips. I leaned forward and kissed the blue, feline nose.
Jed flinched, drawing back from me as if I’d slapped him. The only thing I felt against my lips was Jed’s plain old human nose. I chuckled, making the blackened eyebrows crease. I leaned forward, taking one of the soft lips between my own. He jerked away. I sighed, pushing up to my elbows so I could thread my hands in the inky black hair and pull him down to me. I claimed his mouth. This was my mouth. No matter what form it came in, it was mine.
Outside the windows, a cloud passed over the crescent moon, and the room was dark again. Under my fingertips, Jed’s skin became his regular golden peach. His features shifted back to human. I laughed aloud, kissing him again. He dove for me, attacking my mouth with a zeal that made me glad he didn’t have real fangs. He threw my leg over his hip and thrust forward, grinding his hard length against flesh that was already warm and wet for him. I cried out, the first tense pulse of pleasure seizing through me as he tugged my jeans away. He growled, nipping and biting down the length of my throat as he tore the material at my hips and threw it over his shoulder.
My nails bit into his shoulders, welting the skin, and I was rewarded with a pleased rumble. He knelt over me, and I moaned at the broken contact. He trailed his hand between us, sliding it over my breastbone, down the line of my stomach, and between my legs. I shrieked when his thumb stroked over that little hard nub. He chuckled, so I reached up and tweaked his nipple in retaliation. He yelped and grinned down at me, redoubling his efforts.
When he finally plunged between my thighs, I was already coming. I pulsed and rolled underneath him, my breath too short to scream his name properly. All I could manage was a series of exhausted whimpers. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, trusting him with my body as I had before, and let myself float away.
* * *
We stretched across the couch, Jed’s legs sprawled across mine. My hand trailed down a back that was still a pleasant human tone. Jed was breathing, deep and even at my side, while we both enjoyed a long, comfortable moment of silence. Of course, I couldn’t leave things alone.
“Am I crazy, or did you just shift into one of those things from Avatar earlier?” I asked.
“A Na’vi?”
“You were blue, and you had this weird tail and a cat lip.”
“Huh.”
“When was the last time you saw that movie?”
He shrugged. “I was flipping past HBO earlier this morning and stopped on it.”
“Tree of souls scene?”
He nodded.
“Bloody pervert. So you see a sex scene between two otherworldly creatures, and then we’re all snuggled up together, and . . .”
“So you think I turned into a Na’vi because I watched Avatar?”
“Yes, I do. And the first thing we’re going to do is remove Aliens, Predator, and all zombie movies from your DVD collection, because I am not prepared to deal with that. I don’t think you’re cursed, Jed. I think you’re some sort of were-creature. Only you’re not limited to one form. You can have any form you choose. But because you never learned to control it, the form is determined by whatever is happening in your subconscious.”
“So how do you explain the moonlight factor?”
“I honestly don’t think it applies. For one thing, that wasn’t the full moon. And second, the moon was shining on you earlier while you were asleep, and you didn’t shift until you woke up and saw that the curtains were open. I think it’s psychosomatic. If the witch all those years ago was some sort of sensitive, she might have been able to tell when your ancestor was getting ready to shift for the first time. She may have been able to use that, saying she was cursing him with ‘a thousand faces.’ When he shifted into some animal form for the first time, he was convinced it was a result of the witch’s curse. I would imagine he did it under the light of the full moon, making that connection in his mind. The next time a family member shifted, he blamed the curse, and the next, and the next. You were going to shift no matter what, but the witch just used the power of suggestion against your ancestor to a devastating effect.”
“You’re going to explain what that means, right? In much smaller words?”
