Read The Shape of Desire Online
Authors: Sharon Shinn
The Shape of Desire
T
HE
S
HAPE OF
D
ESIRE
Ace Books by Sharon Shinn
MYSTIC AND RIDER
THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE
DARK MOON DEFENDER
READER AND RAELYNX
FORTUNE AND FATE
ARCHANGEL
JOVAH’S ANGEL
THE ALLELUIA FILES
ANGELICA
ANGEL-SEEKER
WRAPT IN CRYSTAL
THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE
HEART OF GOLD
SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN
JENNA STARBORN
QUATRAIN
TROUBLED WATERS
THE SHAPE OF DESIRE
Viking / Firebird Books by Sharon Shinn
THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET
THE TRUTH-TELLER’S TALE
THE DREAM-MAKER’S MAGIC
GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER
GATEWAY
T
HE
S
HAPE OF
D
ESIRE
SHARON SHINN
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 by Sharon Shinn.
Text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
FIRST EDITION
: April 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shinn, Sharon.
The shape of desire / Sharon Shinn.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-56162-1
1. Shapeshifting—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.H499S49 2012
813’.54—dc23 2011041164
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Susan Austin
Because you’re right:
It’s long past time you had a book dedicated to you.
CHAPTER ONE
I
t’s around two in the morning when I hear a rustle and bump in the kitchen, and I sit up in bed. I’ve left the light on over the stove for the past few days, since I’ve been half expecting Dante to show up. Still, you never know who might have come in through an unlocked door. I get up quietly, throw a robe over my T-shirt, and grab the cell phone in case I need to call 911. Then I creep down the hallway until I can peer into the lighted kitchen and determine whether what awaits me in the other room is a murderer or a lover.
It’s the lover. Dante is standing with his back to me, drinking orange juice straight out of the carton. His black hair is greasy, tangled, and halfway down his back; he is shirtless, and I can see the pattern of his ribs through the roughened layer of skin. I wonder what creature he has been this time, and for how long. Where he has been staying, what he has been eating, if he has been in danger.
For a long time, I don’t speak. I simply watch as he finishes off the juice and then opens the refrigerator door again. He’s clearly ravenous.
He rips open a package of cheese and consumes half the brick in two bites, still rummaging through Tupperware containers and wrapped serving bowls to find something to assuage his hunger. He actually grunts with pleasure when he finds the roast beef I defrosted and left on a plate on the bottom shelf. Setting the plate on the kitchen counter, he closes the refrigerator door and uses both hands to peel back the Saran Wrap, rolls a thick slice of beef, and eats it like a hot dog. He’s halfway through the second piece before he stiffens all over and swings around to stare into the darkness of the corridor where I am hiding.
Just for a moment, I get the chance to see his face in full-on feral intensity. My God, he is so beautiful. Beneath the grime and beard stubble, his skin is marble white; his deep-set eyes are a dense and impenetrable brown. His mouth is full and heavy, his cheekbones deliberately planed. Black hair sweeps back from his forehead in a theatrical fall. He could have been an actor, a model, a muse, some rich woman’s companion, if only his life had been a little different.
If only his life had been completely different.
“Maria?” he says in his low voice. It’s not hard to imagine that voice dropping a few notes, losing its consonants, and coming out as a wordless growl.
He must realize that I am the likeliest presence to be standing a few feet away in the dark; but he sets his plate down, frees his hands for combat, and continues to stare in my direction. Until moments like this, I think that I would like to see him in one of his alternate forms sometime; but I always realize, in those few seconds before he recognizes me, that I really wouldn’t. I am not afraid of him now, but I might be if I saw him in some other guise.
I step out of the shadows. “Yes, it’s me,” I say. “You look so thin.”
He glances down at his chest, bare except for a necklace made of a leather cord holding a single key. Indeed, he’s much leaner than I like. And I see a new wound cutting through the thin, dark mat of hair on
his chest. The cut has already healed, though not long ago. Sometime in the past month, Dante has been in pain and in peril.
He lifts his gaze again and smiles at me, an expression that always reminds me why, despite everything, I love this man so much. “It’s been a tough few weeks,” he admits.
I come closer. “I see you found the beef,” I say. “There’s frozen pizza if you need some carbs.”
“Maybe later,” he says. “Protein’s better for now.”
This close, I get a pretty strong whiff of what I mentally describe as
new Dante
, the creature he always is when he first arrives. There’s dirt and sweat and garbage and urine and some indefinable animal odor—the sort of scent that surrounds a zoo on a hot day. It doesn’t bother me as much as you might think. I want to get closer still, throw my arms around him, press my mouth against his, remind myself of his shape and his strength. He’s always the one who holds back at first. I’m never sure if it’s the wild instincts making him shy away from human contact—or his human instincts shunning his animalistic side, and trying to shield me from it at the same time.
He glances from my face to the plate of roast beef and back to my face. It’s clear he’s trying to determine if he’s eaten enough to get him through the next few hours. “I need a shower,” he says, obviously deciding more food can wait. I step in his path as he heads for the doorway.
“I need to kiss you,” I say, holding him in place with my hand against his chest.
“Maria—”
“Just…a kiss.”
He holds utterly still as I stretch up and touch my lips lightly to his, but beneath my hand I can feel his heartbeat kick up a notch. I press in a little harder, just enough so that his mouth responds to mine, and then I step away. I’m smiling; he’s not.
“There are towels and clean clothes in the bathroom,” I say. “Want me to make you a meal?”
He’s watching me with those unbelievable eyes. At times like this his expression is the most haunted, most unreadable. Is he sorry that he has disrupted my life so completely? Sorry he cannot exist beside me through ordinary days like an ordinary man? Sorry that he cannot stay away? Not sorry at all, merely roused to a passion he refuses to act upon until he has restored himself to some self-imposed level of civilization? Or is he simply still hungry and thinking of nothing more than food?
“Don’t cook,” he says, his voice even lower, throatier. “I’ll come rummage some more once I’m out.”
I nod and turn away to straighten up the little mess he’s made. I don’t hear him leave but I can tell when he’s gone. Even when he’s wearing shoes, which he isn’t at the moment, he moves almost without sound. The only reason I know he has left the room is that I miss him already.
I busy myself in the kitchen for about ten minutes, putting away the meat, rinsing off some apples, making sure the sliced bread is out on the counter so he’ll see it if he comes hunting for more food later on. But I can’t stand being in the kitchen when he’s somewhere else in the house. I lock the outside door, turn off the light, and feel my way down the dark corridor toward the bathroom. The door is open just enough to allow a little light and a lot of steam to escape.
I untie my robe, yank my T-shirt over my head, step out of my panties. I leave all of these lying in the hall as I push the door open and step into the hot, foggy bathroom. I can see his silhouette, dark and blurred, behind the translucent glass of the shower door.