And… nothing.
His body wasn’t responding.
She quirked one eyebrow and turned in a smooth gesture, as if she were warm caramel in human form, walking away with gracious efficiency. He was supposed to drool now. Think luscious thoughts of naked flesh and heated, hitched cries of ecstasy.
And… nothing.
Antsy and scattered, Derry’s mind and body were unquenchable. For months he found nothing that could satisfy him. Entertainment was not a distraction. Women in his bed—in twos and threes—made him feel unfulfilled, even as he tested his own refractory period.
Clubs and dancing and the standard prowl of finding a bed partner, or just a pile of women to fuck, seemed too droll. Clichéd. Boring.
When had life become so boring?
Gillian delivered the double whiskey with a look that lasted two seconds too long. Derry gave her a pleasant, polite smile that was the equivalent of a rejection.
Unaccustomed to that, Gillian’s resulting sour look conveyed her displeasure.
Which, oddly enough, made Derry glad.
“You look like someone stole your lollipop,” Eva said, appearing in that slightly magical way that the woman possessed. Derry felt like an errant schoolboy around her. Always. She was more motherly than he wanted, and if he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he was worried that she considered him too shallow. Unlike his brother, Gavin, Derry had not made his own fortune. His other brothers Asher and Edward rarely set foot in the Platinum Club, preferring the family estate in Montana. Their sister Sophia came to the Platinum Club at odd times.
Mating season, mostly.
He looked at Eva with a sense of Eureka! “It is October, isn’t it?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Do you need a calendar? Have your international party escapades been such a distraction that you’ve lost count of the months?”
Zing! The arrow struck its target.
“No. I—It’s just—” Derry didn’t stammer. Ever. But Eva brought this out in him, and coupled with the existing feeling of ennui mixed with a buzzing, impulsive need to seek something he feared he would never find, his frustration grew.
Eva’s face changed as if she suddenly understood something. “Ah. October. It’s time to begin hibernating for… you.”
She was about to say your type, wasn’t she? Derry and his twin Sophia were bear shifters. Their older brothers, Gavin and Asher, were wolves. Poor Edward, the youngest, was the only mountain lion.
Blended families made for some very strange siblings. They weren’t exactly The Brady Bunch.
“It is indeed,” he answered Eva, distracted. October. Of course. And that meant—
“Derry!” a female voice shouted as the elevator doors parted and three women emerged. His sister Sophia, bold and brash, was first. Tall, dark, and full figured, she gave him insight into how he would look if nature had made him a female. She’d just been acting as temporary nurse to his brother’s future mother-in-law, who’d recently had some kind of medical procedure.
The recovering lady was also the mother of the next woman on the elevator. A woman who made him very glad to be a man.
Jessica Murphy strode into the Platinum Club with a cool, detached demeanor that he knew was as fake as Gillian’s rack. Inside, she must be trembling with fear. Her sister, Lilah, had worked here for a few months until she’d mated with his brother, Gavin. And now they were engaged.
Derry had been told bits and pieces of what the human sisters knew about his family. The Stanton family was one of a handful of shifter families in America, and the Platinum Club was a front for the really exclusive club. The one built so deep beneath the ground floor, so old and hidden, that even Boston’s subway system maps didn’t chart it.
The Novo Club. The only requirement for membership: be a shifter. Derry longed to go back downstairs, but he never stood a woman up.
Gavin had told him that Jessica had ridiculed Lilah when she’d confessed to her sister that Gavin was a werewolf. Derry couldn’t blame her—the truth was so unbelievable in human society that it was easier to think her sister had a touch of hysteria in her.
And yet the truth was the truth.
You can deny reality for only so long. But reality has a way of refusing to ignore you.
Just as Derry couldn’t ignore her.
Her.
In the dim recesses of his mind, he played the good brother, giving Sophia a socially appropriate embrace, saying the right words to Eva, exchanging small talk and chitchat. His mind and senses were elsewhere, the ribbon of Jess’s scent finding its way to him.
Tying him in knots.
Binding him.
“How drunk are you?” Sophia asked, her voice loud on purpose. She wanted attention. Every October, right before she slowed down for hibernating season, she came to the club looking for exactly what he had sought for years.
A fuck buddy. Sophia picked them in twos, always finding men who could satisfy her. One was never enough. And if her post-mating-season stories were true, two really didn’t cut it either.
He could sympathize.
Right now he could fuck his way through a women’s Olympic volleyball team and still feel this unquenched need for something unattainable. His sex drive should be slowing down this time of year, though. Not speeding up.
And involuntary shifting?
At no time of year.
“Not drunk. Just distracted,” he muttered, slugging away his drink. He could feel the defensiveness in his words as cherries and heated oak sweat and musk, and a light bouquet of curiosity filled his nose.
What did Jess smell like when she came? An image of her, lips parted with abandon, hair draped over his fevered body, crying out his name as their sweat and flesh drove them to a place where true release gave him back his sense of wholeness, made him—
Where in the hell did that thought come from?
And now he was hard.
“Distracted by…” Sophia looked around the room with laser-sharp focus, eyes filled with an impish merriment that he knew would lead to trouble. He took every ounce of focus off Jess, who was being introduced to Carl and Gillian at the bar by a pert little curvy brunette who handled something with dresses and hair at the Plat. One of the few female staff members Derry hadn’t managed to sink his cock into, as Gavin once noted.
Too bad you never will.
Derry shook his head fast, like knocking a black fly loose before it could bite, the movement quick and dirty. God dammit, he was losing it. What the hell were the bartenders putting in these drinks?
“Distracted by the lack of good pussy,” he said, making Eva roll her eyes. If he couldn’t please her, might as well shock her. “I need someone adventurous. The women here are more Hello Kitty and I need something more like Catwoman.”
“You need good antibiotics,” Eva said, walking away after her quiet comment, leaving Sophia prostrate with laughter and Derry annoyed. He lifted his glass.
No one appeared.
A ripe, lush sense of pleasure and fulfillment tortured his nose, the scent filling his mind with images of his fingers against her skin, his mouth slanted against hers, his cock buried so deep he could touch her soul, their bodies moving as one toward a gentle love that would make them one.
His.
He tipped his head up, nostrils twitching, needing to capture every molecule of her essence, sensing her uncertainty, her need, her strength.