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“I’ll let you hold this,” I said, tossing the garment at her and reaching for the lacings in the back of my dress.
Sal carefully draped the crimson cloth over the saddle. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Undressing.” I yanked my stays and took my first unfettered breath of fresh air, free of the crushing grip. “Oh God, that feels good.”
“If you hate it so much, then why do you wear it?” Sal asked.
“Because as much as I despise it, I’m still required to transact in the human world, and a woman of my station apparently isn’t acceptable unless my waist is the size of a gopher’s arse.”
I got as far as my shoulder blades, where even with my supernaturally elastic joints, I was unable to finish undoing the lacings. The more I wrestled with the fabric, the more vexed I became.
Mark never had this problem. Men’s clothes were designed to be easy to get into and out of at all times. Hell, he could even allow his transformation to shred the garments from his body.
Whereas I, on the unfortunate occasions where I’d shifted without stripping and ended up cinched by the neck or rib cage, yelping as I fought with the cloth and whalebone prison.
“Let me.”
I hadn’t heard Sal dismount or sensed her behind me until her warm, gloved fingers lifted the dark skein of my hair over my shoulder. Her breath was warm on the back of my neck, raising chill bumps that flooded down my arms.
Three quick tugs and the knot fell free.
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
“Yes.”
The syllable moved through me like warm honey. “Does the Order no longer require a vow of chastity?” I asked.
“It does,” she said. “But if everyone obeyed it, you’d not be here right now.”
I raised my arms and allowed her to draw the garment up my body and over my head, taking my shift with it. Naked in the moonlight, I turned to face her.
Something I’d never dared done had my companion been male.
Sal’s angular jaw flexed, her lips pressing together. The delicate nostrils flared on a long inhale as her eyes carved my shape against the dark cloth of the night.
She wanted me.
I could taste it in the air. Sweet as honeysuckle on a summer evening breeze.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered.
“I know.”
A fine mist of rain began to fall, laying a cool veil over my naked skin. My nipples tightened with the chill, and I didn’t miss the flick of Sal’s eyes moving to the tightened flesh. Heady, this draft was, settling heavy and warm behind my belly button.
“Can I watch you?” She asked in a voice that made fire lick my insides. “I’ve never seen anyone shift,” she added.
This narrowed my options as to what she might be considerably.
“If you like,” I said. Though I had done this more times and could be counted, it felt a sudden stab of trepidation. I’d certainly shifted near someone before, but never for the benefit of an attentive audience. It wasn’t the most graceful of processes to watch, but as I’d begun in my formative years, the restructuring of matter separating my human body from my canine one required little pain.
I looked to the moon, finding it behind the clouds by sense alone, and offered up the part of myself connected by a million invisible strands of starlight.
I surrendered to the silvery flash that pulled me to all fours and rolled through me like the tide. The heat of my transformation exited me on a cloud of steam. The fragrant earth was my personal playground. The night was a poem in my nostrils.
“Dude,” Sal said.
I cocked my head at her in acknowledgment, as I preferred not to speak in animal form. Not because it was particularly difficult, but there’s something inherently ridiculous about a talking animal, and I intensely disliked being ridiculous.
