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She gazed up at me through a face nothing like the one I knew. Staring into her eyes, I identified her timid nature, and nothing of the inner strength she’d displayed as I attempted toroar my frustrations and laugh at the same time.
“You’re a fucking quokka.” My words ended on a snarl. I dropped the tuft of fur and stormed back to my desk.
Silence filled the room behind me as I gripped the window ledge and stared out at Melbourne’s lights, already aglow, showing the city in full swing. My nostrils flared as I breathed hard through my nose. I couldn’t do it. Killian was right. I’d destroy someone like her. Someone soft. For fuck’s sake, quokkas threw their children at their enemy in an attempt to escape, or so I’d heard.
I spun around, ready to rain hell on her to find the brown fluff ball in the middle of my desk. A dark laugh ripped from my throat. “Get down.”
The quokka—Willow—waddled forward and nearly tripped over her own feet. She reached out a tiny paw, and I couldn’t help taking it. Fine bones, I could crush her in a single squeeze. She raised my fingers to her cheek, and when I thought she might nuzzle, or beg, the little minx bit me.
I hissed between my teeth as she released my hand and transformed back into the girl I recognized, curled into a kneeling pose on my desk.
“I’m still me.” Deep brown eyes—the single recognizable part of her in shifted form—glistened, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything else, curled on my desk, naked and waiting.
“Aren’t you going to throw something at me to save yourself?” A childish barb, but I had nothing else. This girl ripped me bare, and I shouldn’t want her the way I did. The way Icravedher. I tapped her ankle with the back of my hand, not daring to touch her more than that. My control hung by a tether, one not so easily released as hers last night. “Off.”
“No.” She raised her chin.
“Oh. I see.” I rubbed my thumb over my bottom lip. “You need to be in actual danger before you try to run screaming.” Iunbuttoned my shirt at a slow pace. No point ruining my favorite one. “You won’t get far.”
“Do I look like I’m running?”
No, pretty girl. But you will.
They all did, once they saw the demon I became. Few people knew who and what I hid inside my daily form. Sharing my secret with her after our scene brought the grand total to five.
My shirt peeled back and dropped from my shoulders to pool around my feet, much as Willow had done with her dress moments before. Black shadows shifted beneath my skin, feathers peeking through already as I unbuckled my pants and dropped them to the floor.
Her gaze tracked down, lingering.
“Did you think your little stunt wouldn’t bring out the worst in me, Willow?”
Thick lashes framed shocked eyes.
I gave her a feral smile. “Not your inner little quokka. Dropping your dress and begging.” I leaned forward, the change already working its way up my spine. “Did you think I’d play nice?”
Her lips parted as I shifted, and I couldn’t tell if my cry or hers tore the sudden silence in the room. Stretching my wings as far as I could, I arced my elongated throat. I might be a different shape to my usual six-foot, four-inches, but this wasfreedom.One beat of my wings marked my limit in the cramped office space—a seven-foot wingspan made full movement a little tough. Flight was impossible in the room.
Gleaming brown eyes stared up at me. Instead of the terror I expected to see in her face, she gave me soft trembles, trust, and … adoration?
That was a new one.
Shoulders rolled back, Willow edged forward, her fingers outstretched. She halted less than an inch from touching me.Emotion flickered across her gaze, and she looked up, requesting silent permission.
There’s my good girl.
I inclined my head to one side. Trembling fingertips traced over my plumage in a light touch. The gentle pressure over my chest left me aching inside. Years. It had been years since anyone touched me like this. Since I’d let them.
Even Killian hadn’t touched me in this form, and I’d known him for over half my life. My poor little wallaby hadn’t gotten this far before she let herself out of my door, screaming her fear and trailing a puddle of her own urine.
The merest of all of us, a tiny marsupial shifter, traded dark caresses with a creature that could rip her to shreds in an instant.
And enjoy it.
But I wouldn’t. I wanted her to adore this form, to react to my touch the same as last night. I wanted her to want me and not be terrified of me. Not that she should listen to me. Even I recognized the bad idea at its inception. This would end in tears, or worse.
“You’re beautiful.” Her luminous brown eyes glistened with those same unshed tears. She knelt on my desk, her knees pressed together, and rose on them to bring her gaze level with mine where I perched on my desk chair. Her fingers traced along my throat, her hand big enough to snap my neck at this range.
Good to see this trust thing went both ways. I might be a bastard who wanted to tease her into submission and get everything I craved from her body, to hear my name on her lips. But that I could give my safety into her hand, quite literally, was a new experience for me.
