The Baby Shift- Georgia Read online

  He’d moved closer to her while he’d spoken, taking her hands in a silent plea for her to understand. She didn’t, not really. But then…she didn’t really understand his world at all. Stunned, she realized that, at this moment, it didn’t really matter. She wanted him, whether he was a hardened killer or a used car salesman. What he did didn’t matter, not to her. It was a job, not who he was.

  She pulled one of her hands from his and raised it to the hardened planes of his chest, then around the back of his neck as she brought her lips to his. He groaned into her mouth and reached for her, pulling her flush against him so that her soft curves pressed against his flesh.

  Desire consumed her like wildfire. Their chemistry had always been amazing, but this, feeling him against her after a year of only dreaming of his touch was more. She couldn’t have stopped what happened next, not even if she’d wanted to.

  Chapter 9

  Matt couldn’t believe that this was happening, that he was touching Es, kissing her, after accepting that he’d lost her for good. It seemed like it couldn’t be real, like any moment he would wake in a hotel room alone, his arms empty and his body was screaming for release. It was a cruel irony that he couldn’t have her right now, not like he wanted to. If he lost himself in the taste, the touch, the feel of her, he might get them both killed.

  That didn’t mean that he couldn’t enjoy the gift that she was offering, though, couldn’t give her the release she craved. He kissed her, delving deeply into her mouth, as his hands explored the body that he’d missed every damn second he hadn’t been able to touch it.

  Soon his mouth followed the path his hands had forged. He kissed a trail down Es’s neck, then to her breasts. He suckled one through her shirt until it rose to a rigid peak for him. He eased her down gently onto the sleeping bag, then reached up to tease her other nipple with one hand while he slid the other lower.

  Matt slid two fingers into her moist center, while his thumb rubbed circles on her clit. He stayed like that, pleasuring her with his mouth and his fingers until she came. Her release sent a surge of new need through his body, and soon his hips were moving of their own accord with the rhythm he longed to thrust into her with.

  When Es started to unzip his pants, though, he stopped.

  “I can’t, sweetheart. I can’t lose control here. I need to keep you safe.”

  She looked up at him, need and the satisfaction from her release intertwining in her eyes. She didn’t reply, and she didn’t stop. He might have the strength to say the words, but he’d never had the strength to turn away from Es’s touch.

  He could feel her breath against his swollen cock, could picture what it would feel like to slide it between her lips, still swollen from his kisses. He didn’t, couldn’t stop her when she freed his length from his pants. She took his hand and guided it so that he was groping himself, then started licking the head of his cock.

  He needed to keep his mind sharp, but his hand started stroking his hardened shaft of its own accord as she guided him into her mouth. He groaned and stroked faster and faster. She flicked her tongue against the tip and then took it into her mouth, releasing it with a loud pop. She took him inside her mouth again; he couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t rest until he was inside of her.

  He stripped her clothes off, stopping now and again to taste and tease her.

  When he couldn’t take the anticipation anymore, he finally spread her thighs gently and slid inside her slowly. He tried to keep the pace slow, but Es grabbed at him frantically, urging him into a faster rhythm.

  He let himself go then, plunging into her again and again as desire swept away any rational thought. His pace became faster, erratic as he felt the first urges of release surging through his balls, swelling his cock. He drove into her moist heat urgently until he came, shooting his release into her in surging streams.

  He trembled with the force of his release. Es took his hand and tugged it gently, a silent plea for him to lay with her. He couldn’t have denied her, even if he’d wanted to. The last few minutes had proven that. He kissed her gently and laid down behind her, trying to ignore the fact that the curves of her body pressed against him were making him want her all over again, making him want to take her fully.

  It had been an Indian summer day, with warmth warding off winter’s chill, but as night fell, the temperature dropped. He urged Es to lay in the sleeping bag while he curled up next to her outside of it. He wasn’t sure they would both fit with his large build, and he needed to be able to ease away from her gracefully for what he planned anyway.

  Once her breathing was deep and even, he kissed her softly.

  “I will love you, Es, to my dying breath,” he whispered.

  Then he slipped away from her and into the night, trying not to think of just how soon that dying breath would probably be. He had no illusions that he could make it through this night without getting poisoned. Even if he didn’t get captured and dosed, he was bound to be exposed before he’d eliminated every guilty person in the compound.

  Going into the compound to confront the shifters was a suicide mission, and nothing less. He just hoped that before he succumbed to an adversary’s teeth, bullets, or poison, he would be able to end this, once and for all. He took consolation in the fact that he’d gotten to tell Es goodbye, and that he was making the world a safer place for her and their daughter. He wished that he had gotten to meet his child, but maybe this was for the best—one less person to love and leave behind.

  His heightened strength made scaling the walls of the compound easy, even with the barbed wire at the top. He dropped softly to the ground on the other side, no worse for the wear other than a few shallow cuts from the barbed wire. He would have expected better defenses from a compound filled with shifters.

  The compound wasn’t made up of much, but then he’d been able to guess that by the small size of its perimeter. There were five buildings, blocky cinderblock structured that had been built more for function than style. Two had the look of small barracks buildings, and a third looked to be a chow hall. The entire place had a militant feel like comfort had been stripped away, leaving only brutal efficiency. The other two buildings, the smallest, must be where the poison was being manufactured and stored. He would need to destroy those buildings and their contents…but not until he had eliminated every shifter within these walls.

  Those buildings were sure to be more heavily guarded, and he couldn’t risk letting anyone know of his presence until he’d eliminated every last person that could walk away with the secret of how to manufacture the poison. Otherwise, this would have all been for nothing. Enforcers worked alone, so there would be no one to come in and clean up his mess if he failed. Their solitary existence was meant to keep them from forming bonds that would shift their loyalty, but Matt sometimes questioned the shifters’ leaders for their decision.

  Times like this, when the odds were overwhelming and the stakes so high, seemed to be proof that the benefits of having backup would outweigh the potential cost. He shook the thoughts from his mind and chose a spot hidden by shadows between the two barracks buildings. He would settle in and watch. Once he had an idea of what their security looked like, he would be able to put his plan into action.

  Two pairs of guards patrolled the inside of the walls, their movements slow enough that he would have brief opportunities to move unseen as long as he timed things right. Every so often, they checked in with someone who was inside the buildings he believed housed the poison.

  Satisfied that he could evade the guards, he moved with brutal efficiency through the two barracks buildings, robbing each resident of life before they had the chance to fully wake. The scratches from the barbed wire burned, but he ignored the stinging pain, denying it the chance to interfere with his mission.

  By the time he finished with the second building and verified that there was no one in the chow hall, he knew that something was wrong. The shallow cuts burned relentlessly with a fire that spread, coursing th
rough his veins. His vision darkened at the edges, and his equilibrium shifted, leaving him stumbling through the night that seemed blacker than it had been only moments ago.

  The way into the compound hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought. The barbed wire must have been coated with the poison. Based on how fast it was taking hold of him, it was more potent than the stuff they typically used. But maybe, if he hurried…maybe he could finish what he had set out to do in time.

  That was his last truly coherent thought before the darkness took hold, robbing him of his vision and making him drop to the ground. He vaguely noted the guards rushing to him, tying him up…vaguely realized that he had failed. He had failed to keep her safe.

  When he came to again, he was tied to one of the tables in the chow hall. He laughed in delirium at the thought that they had bothered to tie him up when he was too weak to lift his own head. If he shifted, he might be able to burn some of the poison off. He might even be able to break through the ropes confining him. It was a damn shame, he reflected before losing consciousness once more, that he was too weak to shift.

  Chapter 10

  Es stretched, feeling warm and secure in the sleeping back despite the cold night air around her. She sat up slowly, searching the darkened clearing for Matt only to realize that he was gone. The hope that he was somewhere close by was shattered when she realized that all his gear—or at least all of it besides the sleeping bag—wasn’t here either.

  He’d gone in without her. It didn’t surprise her. Now that she knew he was a shifter, she should have realized that he would consider her too fragile to be of any use. Her mouth twisted into a bitter semblance of a smile. He’d walked away, just as easily as he had a year ago.

  She tried to settle in, to wait for him to finish and come back to her. She might be frustrated with him, but she didn’t want to brave the woods alone at night. She wasn’t scared of the local wildlife, but the monsters that lived beyond the compound walls were nothing short of terrifying.

  She gave up hope just as the night started to ebb from the sky, making way for the first streaks of dawn to paint color across the sky. Either he had left her here, which she had to admit did not seem likely, or something had gone wrong.

  Whatever the case, she had to do something. She couldn’t just sit here waiting for her daughter to get better. She would go into the compound, as she had planned. If Matt had succeeded, she would find it empty. If he had failed—

  Her mind shied away from the thought, but she had to face the possibility. If he had failed, then she would join the cult, just long enough to find a way to make Sofia immune to the poison.

  She stood and moved around a bit, trying to work out the stiffness from spending the night on the cold ground. She smoothed her hair as best she could and started toward the compound with a quick, sure stride that belied the tension winding through her body.

  There was no one manning the gates when she arrived, so she knocked on them. They opened a crack, and a man she recognized from his infrequent trips into town for supplies stared at her suspiciously.

  “What are you doing here, girl?”

  She tried to ignore the insult in his voice, tried to ignore the lethal grace in the way that he moved, the sure mark that he was a shifter. Now that she’d become more familiar with their world, she recognized those predatory movements in Matt when they’d met, she should have instantly realized what he was.

  “I want…I want to become part of your community.”

  He opened the gate a little wider, and she stepped through it hesitantly. The second she was through the gate, he slammed it closed behind her, and the mistrust she’d read in his eyes before transformed into rage. He grabbed her arm in a bruising hold and yanked her to him, so close that she could smell his sweat and his fetid breath.

  “So, you just happened to come in here, reeking of that enforcer and lust, within hours of him slaughtering almost our entire compound?”

  Es stayed silent. Stupid, not realizing that a shifter would smell Matt on her. Lying wouldn’t help anything, either. Frozen, unsure of what answer would be best—or the least harmful, anyway—she could not utter one word.

  “Well? Doesn’t the enforcer’s whore have anything to say for herself?”

  Tears started to spill down her cheeks. Not from the pain, although his grip on her was crushing. The tears fell unbidden at the realization that she would never see Matt again, that she would never see Sofia again. Matt had been right to leave her behind. She was obviously in over her head in this world of beasts and magic.

  “Maybe,” he rasped, tightening his grip until her bones groaned in protest, “I should just kill you where you stand and be done with it.”

  He then struck her across the cheek. The force of the blow filled her mouth with the coppery taste of her own blood and sent spots dancing across her vision. She’d never been struck before, not in her entire life, and the shock of it was almost as bad as the pain.

  Her captor had just drawn his arm back to strike her again when the door to a nearby building exploded outward with the force of the vicious wolf that blew through the opening. She thought all her adrenaline had been spent, but the sight of the massive wolf barreling toward her sent panicked energy shooting through her limbs and cleared her vision, bringing her back from the brink of passing out.

  She braced herself as the beast reached them, but he didn’t attack her. No, instead, he tore into her captor, bringing him to the ground and tearing out his throat in one fell swoop. She stared, frozen with shock, as warm blood flecked her face.

  Es was sure that she would be next, but the massive wolf turned his back to her. His attack had gotten the attention of all the shifters in the compound, and they were advancing. He didn’t move to meet them, instead standing a short distance in front of her. Almost like he was…protecting her.

  “Matt? Is that you?”

  He didn’t show any indication that he had heard her, but who else could it be?

  The chance to wonder about it further was stolen away by the advance of the other werewolves. They shifted as they advanced on him. A part of Es wanted to run while they were distracted with the bigger threat, but something told her that it wouldn’t help. They were faster and stronger. There was no way she could evade them on foot, and running might only draw their attention to her.

  So, she waited, watching in horror as the five shifters advanced on them. The fight moved so fast that Es could hardly see more than flashes of claw, tooth, and blood. Two of the shifters were quickly dispatched by the shifter that had to be Matt. He had a distinct advantage in size, but as he tore out the throat of the second shifter, two others jumped on him at once, opening large gashes in his side with their claws.

  He shook them off with a roar of fury and snapped one wolf’s neck, then eviscerated the other with a swipe of his claws. He was moving slowly, though, clearly weakened from the blood he had lost during the attack.

  Es watched helplessly as he stumbled and fell. She expected the other wolf to finish him off, but instead, she shifted until Amber Anderson stood before Matt’s prone form, clothed only in dirt and blood.

  “I can’t decide if I’d rather give you enough poison to finish the job, or if I’d rather cut you a little deeper and watch you bleed out,” she snarled.

  Matt stirred but didn’t have the strength to stand. Es crept silently toward the man who had attacked her. He was the only one in human form, and so the only one who might have a weapon she might be able to use. She had little hope that she would be able to defend Matt against a werewolf, but she had to try.

  Relief filled her when she realized that he’d had a gun on him. She took it and pointed it at the shifter, unsure of how to take aim, but she couldn’t squeeze the trigger. A bit of fiddling with the gun made her realize that it had a safety that had to be disengaged, and with shaking hands, she took aim once more.

  Es squeezed the trigger, then groaned in defeat when the bullet only grazed Amber’s side.
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  The shot might not have incapacitated her, but it had certainly taken the other shifter’s attention off Matt. Amber shifted and lunged toward Es. Es closed her eyes and fired blindly as the shifter knocked her to her back with two massive paws.

  She must have hit something vital, because the werewolf collapsed on top of her, crushing her body with its death throes. Es whimpered in pain, but nothing she did, allowed her to work her way free. It was a nightmare, laying there as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the body cooled. The whimpers had long since faded from her throat, and she stared in numb detachment.

  She couldn’t even see if Matt was okay. Her entire field of vision, except for a narrow view of a patch of winter brown grass, was obstructed by Amber’s body.

  She should have told Stephanie where she was going. What must her friend be thinking right now? How long would it take for anyone to think to investigate this isolated compound? Weeks, months? With how insular its occupants had been, there was a chance that no one would ever realize where she had gone.

  Just as she’d begun to give up hope of ever leaving the compound—alive at least—the corpse on top of her moved. Another large shift, and it rolled from on top of her. Tears filled her eyes as Matt gathered her into his arms. Sobs shook her, and she couldn’t even begin to tell if they were from relief that she was alive, or from the horrors she had witnessed these past hours, for the death of her innocent, trusting view on life.

  Eventually, as they all must, her tears ran dry, leaving her with the decision of how to move forward from her grief. When life turned everything upside down, changed it so completely that you couldn’t even begin to see how the fragments of the life you’d once led could have ever fit together into something that was whole, there was always a decision to be made. She could move forward with regret, wondering what decisions had led her to this point. Or with anger, bitterness at the events that had changed her so irrevocably. Or, she could choose to get up and put those pieces back together.