Authors: Robin Cavanaugh
*****
“Thank you for dinner. It was amazing. I feel kinda bad because I walk down that street to get to downtown and I must’ve passed it a dozen times.” Smiling at her as he pulled into the underground parking structure, Lukas didn’t really offer a response as his inner beast began to get excited. The last time Cassandra was in an elevator with him she’d jumped him, latching onto him like a koala and kissed him fervently. It was an acute reminder that she wasn’t exactly all nicey-nicey and innocent. Just as much as he’d excited and explored her she’d done the same to him by doing things that were far from vanilla.
Under her dress Cassandra felt her nipples tighten as soon as the elevator doors closed her in with Lukas. Being alone with him in a box that offered such delicious memories was already making her hot, but she tried her best not to shuffle and reveal her discomfort. She didn’t want him thinking she was a tramp, getting turned on by even being near him.
“You know, I can smell how wet you’re getting, baby. I can hear your heart beating faster and harder, too.” Jumping with a little squeak of surprise when Lukas whispered in her ear, Cassandra’s face turned five shades of red before he grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. His eyes captured hers, and a small gasp flew from her lips at the simple fact that they weren’t brown anymore.
Instead, they were a reptilian green, complete with slits for pupils.
“I have very, very good senses, Cassy. Does this turn you on, baby? Staring into the eyes of a beast that wants to tie you down and fuck you until you can’t walk.” Lukas’ voice was husky, like he was speaking from deep within his throat, and Cassandra whimpered, clenching her legs together as her womb pulsed with force. Opening her mouth, she accidentally blurted out the first thing that came to her mind without thinking or filtering it.
“I don’t like this…!” Watching Cassandra go wide eyed as her squeal bounced around him, Lukas recognized his mistake immediately and just as quickly his beast backed off, turning his eyes back to brown. That small change alone made her sad a little, and he let go of her chin to caress her cheek.
“I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have been so harsh.” Silently berating himself, he spoke gently as he felt the elevator stop and felt a wash of relief when she nodded hastily. Her frazzled expression told him he’d pushed her enough even though he hadn’t meant to.
Frankly his inner animal was like a child, taking a mile when only given an inch.
“What was that, Lukas? Why did your eyes change color? Wh…” Once inside Lukas’s apartment Cassandra started asking questions left and right, and she was only silenced when he thumbed her bottom lip. Gently redirecting her to the couch, he sat her down but continued to stand, simply looking down at her with an unreadable expression. It was kind of nerve wracking because she’d never seen him so serious before. Twiddling her fingers, it seemed like a very long time before he finally spoke up.
“I know this is out of the blue but I wanted you to know something before we go further, Cassy.” Just when Cassandra thought she was in the clear, Lukas started to take off his shirt and she was struck by how masculine he was. In no way was he a professional body builder but he was still extremely muscular. Truly it was something she liked, feeling small and dainty and feminine underneath him. Scanning the toned contours of his chest and shoulders, she licked her lips absently before he cleared his throat with a smirk on his face.
“Don’t think this is it, baby. Just watch.”
Nodding absently, Cassandra shook her head a little to clear the fog in her mind before Lukas turned so she could see his profile. Before she had time to ogle him further things took an entirely unexpected turn when his muscles began to move. Going a little wide eyed, she didn’t even blink as his back began to ripple almost unnaturally until his skin tore open. Something bloody poked out, growing longer and wider, and only faintly she heard the sound of bond cracking and popping.
When Lukas’s leathery wings were fully extended he turned so his back was facing Cassandra but it was more to contemplate the shock on her face. He expected it of course, but being confronted by it was an entirely different matter. It made him wonder if this was the right time to expose himself since they still didn’t know much about each other. As the silence stretched, he felt a wiggle of regret slither through his veins.
“… Yo-… I-… You hav-ve…” Reaching up to rub her jaw at her stutter, he finally turned to face her before nodded firmly.
“Yes. I have wings. I’m a shifter, to put it bluntly. You know what that is, right?” Staring rather dumbly, Cassandra didn’t really offer a response as she tried to wrap her mind around what Lukas was showing her. Of course she’d read books and seen movies, but the fact that it was right in front of her, with no use of CGI at all, was very startling. Furrowing her eyebrows, she hid her frown behind her palm but he saw it anyway before the appendages protruding from his shoulder blades slowly disappeared.
“I know it’s a lot to put on you, Cassy. I just… I really like you and I wanted you to know.”
“I- I’m flattered… I think. I mean… can… can I just not think about it right now?” Cassandra wasn’t trying to be rude, but she wondered what Lukas honestly expected of her. Never had she thought in her wildest dreams that this kind of thing would happen, and it was so outlandish it was hard to believe. Redirecting her eyes to her lap, she felt hot shame flame her cheeks. If he liked her enough to unveil this to her she wasn’t sure what that meant about their relationship. Sure, they’d had sex a few times but did that really warrant such drastic action.
“Hey.” Glancing up at the tender call, she watched him take a seat next to her on the couch to watch her with intense eyes.
“No pressure, okay? I wouldn’t rush you.”
“I think I should go home… please.” Hearing those tiny words come out of Cassandra’s mouth made Lukas sigh, but he had prepared for this outcome, even if it was rather poorly.
“Yeah.”
*****
The drive from his apartment to her house was uncomfortable at best, and all she did was look out the window the whole time. It was probably the most agonizing twenty minutes of his life, and he held the steering wheel tightly as he silently scolded himself. He should’ve waited, but wanting to get this out of the way was pressing on him. If she knew what he was and didn’t want to be with him because of it he would be crushed, but he would understand. She was only human, after all. On that same note if she wanted to be with him it was a vital piece of information she had to know. He wanted her to accept him and have one of those relationships where secrets were pillow talk.
Maybe it was a lot to reveal in just a week’s acquaintance, but there was no going back now.
“Thank you for dinner.” Speaking up as she opened the passenger side door, Cassandra didn’t wait for a response as she clamored out of the car and rushed up to her house. She felt sick and she wasn’t sure why. Her mind spun with what Lukas had showed her and left little attention for anything else. Pushing open her front door, she accidentally slammed it but her mother’s call flew right over her head as she rushed up the stairs to her bedroom.
Leaning on the inside of the barrier, Cassandra slid to her butt and covered her face with her hands. Complicated things didn’t work well with her, and this was way out of her comfort zone.
“Casey? Honey, are you okay? What happened on your date?” Cassandra sniffled as her mother’s concern floated through the wooden door, and she pushed herself up to open it. She wasn’t sure what she should say, but she told her mom everything and usually got sound advice.
“The date was great, Mom… I just… don’t know. It’s moving a little fast, I guess.”
When Lukas made it back to his apartment, Alex was sitting on the couch, staring intently at the blank, black screen to the TV. He was definitely not in the mood for a conversation, but the slender man seemed dead set on expressing his opinion as he stormed towards the open kitchen.
“You know you didn’t fuck that up as bad as it seems, right Lukas? I mean, I heard the whole thing and it could’ve gone a lot worse. You gotta remember that humans are fragile.” Snorting roughly, Lukas grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and leaned on the counter to heave a breath. If he wanted to be honest with himself his housemate was right. Things could’ve gone a lot worse than they had. He’d just held on to the hope that she’d toss his shifting abilities to the side and accept it instantly. Obviously that was wrong, but sometimes things just didn’t work out that easily.
“Don’t worry, man. Give her a few days and she’ll be okay. You remember when you first showed me I nearly tried to kill you.” At the reminder Lukas let out a groan and Alex chuckled. They’d only just moved in together after a year or so of friendship. It’d been a dark month or so afterwards since Alex was always on guard, trying to find a reason to stab him.
“Yeah, yeah. I remember. This is different, though.” In fact, Lukas couldn’t express how badly he wanted Cassandra in his life. Even if they never spoke about his shifting, if she just ignored it, he wouldn’t even care. Most shifters wanted acceptance from their partners, but if he didn’t have that it wouldn’t matter because at least he had her.
Licking her lips, Cassandra hopped off the city bus at the stop nearest to her house and reached up to scratch her head. It’d only been two days since the episode in Lukas’s apartment, but she still had a hard time thinking about it. Over the past forty-eight hours, she realized it was probably a horrible idea to just leave him hanging like she did, but in hindsight she couldn’t think of doing it any differently. Reciting the scenes over again in her mind for the umpteenth time, she let out a sigh as her sneakers hit concrete.
“If you like him that much I don’t think you have a problem, honey. You know, I married your father after a month of knowing him and we were together for thirteen years before he died.” Cassandra frowned as her mother’s words came into her mind’s eye. Her memory of her father wasn’t all that great, but she knew her parents loved each other. If he were alive they’d probably still love each other, too. They’d always been what she felt a husband and wife should be like.
The problem now was that she had such an opportunity, but she just couldn’t get over what Lukas had showed her.
“Mom! What are you doing?” Shrieking at the top of her lungs, Cassandra ran the last block home when she noticed through her thoughts that her mother was stacking boxes in the driveway. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but they were filled with her stuff. She knew her mother was pretty eccentric but this was absolutely insane as the older woman smiled at her as she skidded to a halt on the walkway.
“It’s time for you to move out, Casey. I’ve already called Ryce and told her not to let you stay at her place either. You need to stop running from your problems, you hear? I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here anymore. You’re twenty-one years old, time to grow up.” Staring with wide eyes, Cassandra’s jaw nearly hit the ground in shock as her mother’s words washed over her.
“You’re kicking me out? But you can’t! I have nowhere to go!”
“Yes you do. Now, I know you think this is sudden, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. Ryce moved out and made something of herself. You should too. You can’t stay here and float through life on a short breeze, Casey.” Blinking slowly, Cassandra felt her face heat up when she realized what this was really about. Sure, her mother might’ve wanted her to move out for a long time, but this was all because she was avoiding Lukas. She wasn’t answering his texts or taking his calls and she did nothing but sulk over the issue with him.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me over a guy!” Instead of responding Cassandra’s mother simply shrugged, and she smiled on her way back into the house. It was about time her daughter flew the coop anyway, the circumstance was just perfect. For the past year she wanted Casey out, but not maliciously. The poor girl hadn’t even been out of the city she was born in, and that was just plain sad. Besides, she saw the way Lukas looked at Cassandra, and it was that very same look Paul had given her before they were married.
Pulling out her cell phone with shaking fingers, Cassandra tapped around until she reached her sister’s phone number before initiating the call. When she got an instant hang up she let out a groan tears welled in her eyes. Frustration couldn’t begin to explain what she was feeling, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was stupid for not expecting this. Her mother had brought up moving out a few times since the deal with NextGen went through. It shouldn’t surprise her that she would do something so abruptly because that’s just how she was.
“Hey, Cassy, I…” Closing her eyes at the sound of Lukas’s voice through the phone, Cassandra cut him off before she lost her nerve.
“C- can you come get me? My mom… kicked me out.” It was nearly seven in the evening and the sun was setting rather fast, but she didn’t want to be stuck outside at night. Although she’d lived here in this house her entire life things changed in the dark. Slumping as she sat on the stairs in front of the door, she propped her forehead on her palm before Lukas spoke up again.
“She what? Yeah, I’ll be right there.” Just like that Lukas hung up, and Cassandra set her cell phone next to her to wait, wondering why things that happened to her felt so forced.
*****
It only took Lukas ten minutes to make the twenty-minute drive to her house, but Cassandra still felt a spike of nervousness at seeing him again. She didn’t have any friends that she knew well enough to call, but logically she shouldn’t have called him either. Watching him park in front of her boxes still stacked in the driveway, she licked her lips as the moisture suddenly drained from her mouth. This shouldn’t be so hard. Every time they’d seen each other it was nice; when they slept together it was even better. Unlike a normal hook up she didn’t feel horrible about it, or that she had to rush out while he was sleeping to avoid feeling ashamed.
“Hey, are you okay, Cassy?” Lukas acted like he was going to hug her but he paused, and Cassandra held her cheek in her palm as she shook her head. In the end he only sat next to her but even then he didn’t touch her even though she knew he wanted to.
“This is all your fault. My mom kicked me out because of you.” Frowning, Lukas didn’t detect any accusation in Cassandra’s tone, but she was obviously troubled. Rubbing his jaw absently, he let the silence tick on as he tried to think of something to say. These past three days had been absolute torture, and he shouldn’t have expected their reunion to be explosive because she just wasn’t that kind of person. He thought he’d get screamed at and unloaded upon, but she was keeping everything bottled up.
It was similar to when he’d asked about her father.
“I know you’re not exactly comfortable with me right now, baby, but I never intended to scare you. It’s okay to be afraid, and I won’t take away that right. You just have to understand that it was either tell you in the beginning and suffer through getting over it, or wait and lie to you until you found out and that might’ve not been in such a neutral way. If something happened to you down the road… even if we were just friends, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I didn’t want to pile that on you. I wanted to tell you on my terms, not when you were scared out of your mind. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to be with me knowing what you know.”
Clenching her hands into fists as Lukas talked, Cassandra squeezed her eyelids together as tears threatened to assault her once again. He just sounded so understanding, and it hurt her chest to know it was about her. Taking a few deep breaths through her nose, she tried not to shake from the force of holding in her emotions. She hadn’t cried since her father passed away, but this experience was very similar and she wasn’t comfortable at all.
“I jus-st don’t know what to feel. This is so hard.” Stuttering slightly, Cassandra pursed her lips together as she stared at her knees and Lukas clasped his hands under his legs. Really it was just to keep from touching her, since he knew she probably wouldn’t appreciate even a comforting pat right now. He absolutely despised everything that was going on right now, but he knew he had to at least try. Giving her options didn’t seem like a good idea, though. She needed to be told straight forward instead of getting more confused.
“We don’t have to talk about it, Cassy. In the elevator I just gave you too much slack, but it won’t happen again. As long as you’re around I’ll be fine. I’m not going to lie to you again- a lot of the reason we hit it off so well at the bar was because we’re attracted to each other on a primal level. It’s like how you like the way I smell and why I take you straight to bed. That’s our instincts. But after our date, when I decided to tell you, it was because I really like you as a man. I’ve never met any other person even remotely like you- eternally optimistic and so bubbly even though you’ve had a terrible life. That’s why, if you don’t think you can get over what I am, I won’t try to keep you. If I make you miserable because this thing is in the way…”
“That’s not it.” Whispering, Cassandra interrupted Lukas but didn’t look away from her knees. She wasn’t sure why, but she just couldn’t look at him the way she was. Uncertain and afraid isn’t the way she wanted him to see her.
“I thought a lot about it, and I’m sure it’ll be fine with some time… I just… I’ve never thought about dating or anything. Everyone, even now- they make fun of me and look down on me because I’m a high school dropout turned overnight millionaire. They think my life is so easy because I still live at home and I never worked a day in my life. But it’s not easy. It’s not easy being happy all the time. It’s not easy seeing people I went to school with on the street and getting talked about to their friends or coworkers. How can you want someone like me when I can’t even acknowledge my own shortcomings?” Up until that very moment Cassandra had never voiced anything bad that happened to her. She ignored it, moving on with her day in complete ignorance. Even when she heard what was being said about her but not to her she passed it off, convincing herself that it was about someone else. When being happy became a chore she would find something to distract herself.
Really her entire life was a lie that she didn’t want to wake up from and it was debilitating.
“Hey.” Finally reaching for her, Lukas gently took Cassandra’s face in his palms and the heat from her flushed cheeks scorched his skin. It’d been too long since he last touched her, but he brushed aside his pounding heart to thumb her damp, mile long eyelashes. He’d never seen her so vulnerable before, even when he’d brought up her father on their date.
“To me, you don’t have shortcomings, baby. Everything about you is perfect and no one can convince me otherwise. It doesn’t matter to me if you lie to yourself because I know the truth, even if you don’t say it. I know I’m lucky to even know you. I know that sometimes you need to punch and scream at something, but you won’t let yourself. Most of all I know how much you want to feel worthy, and you are. You’re worthy even if only to me. I’m one of the most powerful species of shifter in the world, Cassy, and you mean almost everything to me.” Lukas was so serious, maintaining eye contact through his entire speech, that the tears Cassandra tried so desperately to keep it in but it couldn’t be contained anymore. It wasn’t that people didn’t love her; her mother and her sister surely did. No one had ever just sat her down and explained why. Truly it was very confusing being loved but not knowing why. She never knew what values and virtues people liked about her and what they didn’t.
Unable to hide his small smile, Lukas couldn’t squash his triumph at the simple fact that he’d cracked Cassandra like an egg. She’d opened up to him, and he knew without a doubt that she’d never done that with anyone before. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her lifting her hands, but he didn’t try to stop her from striking his chest. First it was a few weak punches, but then they got harder and she even scooted closer to him.
“I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!” Cassandra started to sob, but Lukas didn’t shy away even though she faintly registered his breath huffing when she struck him. Even though she expected to feel disgusting it just wasn’t there, and the longer she let herself cry the lighter she felt. After a while her hands started to hurt, her arms shook and she could barely breathe, and it was only then that he wrapped his arms around her.
“I know, baby.” Cocooned in strength and security, her chest tightened as he spoke low into her hair, his hand pressing firmly against her back. She hadn’t realized how much she missed his hugs.
“Do you… Do you think I could stay with you for a little while?” Nodding absently, Lukas ignored his inner beast’s screech of triumph at her small, hiccupping request. This was only one battle in a war he hadn’t won yet. After all, he hadn’t even shifted in front of her, and being confronted with a dragon twice as tall as himself was scary for anyone.
“Yeah, Cassy, for as long as you want.”
Trudging into Lukas’s apartment, Cassandra pushed off her sneakers and instantly dropped onto the couch to rub her face for the tenth time since leaving her house. Behind her she could hear him dropping her back pack on the hardwood, but it didn’t take him long to sit beside her and throw his arm across her shoulders.
“If you’re going to live here you have to pay rent, Cassy.”
“But didn’t you say…” Turning to find a small smirk on Lukas’s face, Cassandra felt her face heat up when she realized he wasn’t talking about money. Immediately glancing down at her lap, she let out a small huff, but was surprised to find she really didn’t mind the sexual innuendo. If the past few days were any indication she expected to feel uncomfortable and out of place, but it was as it had been since the first met. She felt instead something similar to freedom. It was like she could be herself around him and never be judged badly. The thought brought a small smile to her face before he tightened his arm around her to pull her into his lap, straddling his waist.
“You’re so sexy when you act all innocent, baby. It’s a major turn on.” Capturing Cassandra’s mouth before she could reply, Lukas groaned as that familiar heat spread through his body like a raging fire. She needed some loving after everything she’d been going through and he was perfectly happy to comply. Sneaking his hand into her thick, mahogany hair, he felt her shiver acutely over the crotch of his jeans as her own fingers wrapped around his jaw. It was something he loved about her. She didn’t grab his hair even though she liked her own being tugged on.
Opening her mouth with little prodding, Cassandra felt her mind reel at how fast the tables could turn. Only half an hour ago she was hitting Lukas, crying into his shirt. Now she was making out with him shamelessly. It was almost enough to give her whiplash if he wasn’t so sweetly distracting her. Despite their time apart, his kisses were still tender and soft, managing to pull a small whimper from her throat. She’d been with a man before that was hard and demanding and it hadn’t been a very pleasant experience. In fact, it was the reason she avoided men for the better part of two years. Working on her virtual reality headset would get tiring sometimes, but after that event she didn’t go out and try to appease her boredom in that way.