After the Wedding

 

A Shifter Suspense short story

Note to readers: Irina and Grant first appear in Claimed by the Panther, book 1 in the Shifter Suspense series. This story takes place between books 2 and 3 and contains mild spoilers.

Grant was on the hunt for his mate.

Not only his mate. His wife.

The wedding had been everything he should have hated. Panthers were solitary creatures, and he’d always been so careful to shape his own life according to what he thought his inner panther needed. A big wedding, with all his friends and family packed into some lushly exclusive resort, everyone seeking him out to clap him on the back and congratulate him? It should have been torture.

But no. Irina had taught him how wrong he was about what he thought his panther needed. The sight of everyone who cared about him gathered to celebrate his bond with Irina hadn’t been torture. It was amazing. His panther felt like the cat who’d got the cream.

And now the cream had up and vanished.

He opened an external door onto a garden patio. The luxury retreat where they’d held the wedding was a palatial structure of white stone and lush gardens full of flowers that made the air heavy with their sweet scent. The full moon hung in a soft velvet sky, and night birds sang quietly in the shadows.

He’d thrown all the guests out an hour ago, and their laughter as he and Irina slammed the door behind them still rang in his ears. The staff had the night off, too. He wanted to spend his first night of married life alone with his wife, and he wanted it to start now.

Where was she?

“Irina?” he called into the night. His nostrils flared, hunting through the floral notes for the sweetest flower of all.

Nothing.

He padded back indoors. The interior was all soft whites and golds, from the marble flooring to the molded ceilings. It had been the perfect backdrop for his mate, with her masses of dark hair and her rich, dark-brown eyes. She was a dark star in a palace as pale as the canvases she painted on.

That gave him an idea.

No, he thought, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. She wouldn’t have…

His panther prowled inside him as he bounded silently up the stairs. Above the ballroom and dining halls they’d used for the wedding, the house was a maze of luxurious suites.

She’d come this way. While he was busy thanking the staff for their hard work that night, and ensuring they were all out of the way before he turned his full attention to his new wife, the new wife in question had come up here…

…Not to the bedroom.

Grant’s brow furrowed. Irina had literally gasped when she first saw the grand suite. The bed was enormous, a cloud of pillows and blankets of the exact sort she liked best. The bath on the open-air patio beyond was the size of a small ocean. The space was arranged with reading nooks and lounging settees, and he’d whispered into her ear all the ideas he’d had about what they could do other than read and lounge in them, once they were alone, and the memory of her grin of anticipation still shivered deliciously over his skin.

But she wasn’t here.

The platter of delicacies meant to fuel their first night together was untouched. The candles around the oceanic bath were burning low.

The hairs on the back of Grant’s neck rose.

“Irina?” he called again. His panther was hunter-still, but his heart began to thunder in his ears. Is she safe?

She had to be safe. He could not let her be hurt again.

He swallowed hard. This location was meant to be secure. It had to be. He had gone to great lengths to ensure it. He and Irina were alone in here, yes, but his security forces patrolled the grounds. Nobody could get through.

Unless they had.

Unless all the joy he’d let himself feel today was a lie, and his world was about to be taken away from him.

Clunk.

A few rooms away, something fell to the floor.

Grant’s panther rose up. In an instant, he was on all fours, his panther’s body a sleekly muscular shadow. It padded down the corridor. As a shifter, Grant’s human senses were stronger than regular humans’, but that was nothing compared to his panther’s sense of smell and hearing. He could pinpoint the location of every damn tweeting bird outside. He could smell where the staff had walked down these corridors, where he and Irina had stopped and kissed before she disappeared to put on her wedding dress that morning—

His panther’s lip curled back as a chemical tang hit its nostrils. The animal snarled silently at the scent, but Grant’s human heart was already soaring even before he wrangled the doorknob with one heavy paw.

Irina was sitting at an easel in front of a set of open French doors, her wedding dress spread out around her. She’d dragged a small table over from who knew where, to hold all her things. The smell of turpentine and oil paints filled the room even with the doors open to ventilate.

She was fine. She was safe.

She had taken herself away on their wedding night to paint.

Grant padded forwards. His panther waited until Irina lifted her brush from the canvas, then nudged her elbow with its heavy head.

“Oh!” His mate blinked down at him. “You startled me. I was—”

Her eyes went wide. It always took Irina time to come out of her paintings. This was the fastest he’d ever seen her resurface.

“Oh no. What time is it? Is everyone gone? I was going to thank Moss for the amazing food, and everyone for making today run so smoothly…”

His panther butted up against her. She put her arms around it, and he shifted back into human form to hold her.

She rested her head against his chest. Then looked up at him, her eyebrows creasing. “You were worried?”

“You disappeared.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. But I had to get this down while it was still so clear in my head.” She took his face in her hands and searched his eyes. “Ever since I figured out what I was doing with my magic, it’s harder and harder to put it off. I told myself I would only be a minute.”

“It’s been several.” He put his hands over hers and kissed her. She tasted like champagne and smelled like her own sweet self. And paint. But his human nose didn’t mind that the way his panther did. “I sent everyone away with our thanks. If they missed you, they probably thought you were upstairs waiting for me.”

“I was upstairs. And I wasn’t not waiting for you, I was just… keeping myself busy in the meantime?” she suggested, the guilt in her expression making way for a mischievous glint. “Take a look.”

She showed him the canvas. It took him a moment to make sense of it. The painting was an explosion of color and movement, and as much as he teased her, she’d only been gone a few hours at most. The art was more impression than detail.

But as he looked, the vibrant brushstrokes transformed.

“That’s Lance,” he said, as shape and color resolved itself into his best man. “My mother. Our friends.” He hesitated, looking again. “And their animals.”

The hint of a snow leopard at Lance’s side, as quiet and powerful as the man himself. Mathis had his lion, and his mate Chloe was dancing with him with her darting little bird at her shoulder. Grant’s mother wasn’t a shifter, but Irina’s painting made no distinction. Everyone in it, shifter and human, was shown full of life and joy and magic. Celebrating together.

“We’re going to have a thousand photos of the two of us up in front of everyone,” Irina said softly. “Now we’ll have one of everyone who was there with us. All of them, not just their human sides.”

Grant’s heart warmed. Even as remote as they were here, he and the other shifters had to be careful to keep their shifter selves hidden. Some of the guests were humans who didn’t know shifters existed.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Irina smiled. “Thank my magic for hauling me up here and giving you a heart attack when you thought I was missing,” she half-grumbled.

“It was only a moment of trauma.” He shrugged it away.

“That’s a moment too long.” She pinched his chin gently and pulled him in for another kiss. He slipped his tongue between her lips and she moaned, melting against him.

“I think I have recovered,” he reassured her.

“Oh?” She kissed him again, long and slow. “You don’t need me to look after you?”

“Ah. My mistake. Now that you mention it, I do feel faint…”

“You’d better lie down.”

She began to lead him out towards their suite, but he fell to his knees in front of her. “No, I think we should take this slowly,” he said gravely. “I’ll get to lying down soon. But first, don’t you have some cleaning up to do?”

Irina’s eyes flashed. “You have been listening when I talk about my painting.”

“What made you think I wasn’t paying attention?” He kept eye contact with her as his fingers crept beneath her dress. Her legs were soft and warm and so, so long, their dimpled curves leading up to his favorite place in the world.

“You always seem distracted.” She bit her lower lip, leaning into his touch.

“Who’s distracted?” He grinned slyly. “Wash your brushes.”

He ducked under her skirt. Her wedding dress was a wafty dream. All day, it had clung and whispered around her when she moved, as though it was flirting with the idea of falling off her altogether.

It had driven him mad. And now the time had come, he didn’t want to take it off her, anyway.

He traced the generous curves of her calves, tickling the sensitive skin behind her knees with the pads of his fingertips. She moaned, her legs trembling.

Her scent filled his soul, and he didn’t need his panther’s enhanced abilities to tell him what that sweetness meant.

“Patience.” He kissed the inside of her thigh. She swore—almost swore, biting the word off before it got out.

He could do better than that.

He lowered himself closer to the ground, nuzzling at her knees, pushing them apart. The noise of a bottle being hurriedly opened and sloshed into a jar filtered through from somewhere outside the glorious confection of Irina’s wedding dress. Turps. How often had he told her she could afford the more expensive solvents? The ones that didn’t make his panther want to claw its own nose off?

But she insisted it didn’t work for her. She put all her senses into the art, and the eye-watering smell of turpentine was as much a part of her creative process as the colors themselves.

He pressed his fingers into the softness beneath her hips. She groaned, and stabbed brushes into jars.

He kissed. She swirled.

He stroked. She wiped clean.

He licked.

She lost her balance.

He held her safe, one hand on each hip and his face nestled in between. She was sweet and slick, soaking the delicate lace of her panties, and her hands landed on his shoulders to lock him in place.

“I can’t just leave it like this!” she gasped.

“Then don’t.” His voice was muffled.

“But you’re—” She let out a soft, moaning cry.

“Enjoying my first taste of married life?” he suggested innocently. She moved her hands, cradling his head through the wisping layers of her skirt.

“Torturing me,” she corrected him.

“I wouldn’t want you to get bored while you’re cleaning up.”

She laughed, delighted and surprised and frustrated. “All right. Fine. I’m done here.”

“I thought you couldn’t leave it like this?”

“Oh, for—” She tilted her head back and groaned. “If you do that again, I’ll trip and spill solvent all over the painting. It’ll be ruined. Then I’ll have to clean that up, and then I’ll have to find the laundry facilities and figure out how to treat my dress before it dissolves or goes up in flames or whatever happens when fancy silk meets the fiery rage of me ruining my work.”

Reluctantly, Grant gave her one last kiss, then untangled himself from her skirts. “When you put it like that, it sounds like I’d better carry you off to bed.”

Irina stared down at him, face flushed, eyes wide and dark with desire. “Not so fast,” she breathed. “Don’t you still need to lie down?”

She put one knee on his chest and pushed him down. A chandelier glowed behind her head, surrounding her with a halo of shimmering light.

“It’s been a long day,” his dark angel said, “and I gave you a fright, disappearing on you like that. Let me check you’re all okay.”

His panther rumbled in his chest, and the noise that escaped him made her lick her lips.

She sank down on top of him, pinning him with her incredible thighs. He lay back, more than happy to stay exactly where she put him.

“Let’s check here first.” She laid her palms flat against his heart, and then her hands slid sideways, fingertips digging into his pecs, thumbs making circles on his rock-hard nipples.

Which were not the only part of him that was rock hard.

She was sitting too far up his body for his cock to brush against any part of her. He was naked, his clothes having disappeared when he shifted into panther form, but there was so much wispy wafty dress swirling around his downstairs he might as well have still been dressed.

It was excruciating. It was wonderful. In his whole life, Grant Diaz had never been denied anything. The locks and chains he’d put on his own behavior had been stifling, guilt-choked things.

He’d certainly never known any denial as sweet as this.

All her careful, longing touches. There wasn’t a single inch of his body she hadn’t explored, but though she’d been tentative when they first met, there was nothing wary in her touch now. Her care was all about enjoyment. There was never any hesitation, no worry or fear that he wouldn’t enjoy her touch, and that was a victory he relished. His mate should know how much he desired her.

How much her own desire for him drove him wild.

“My husband.” She traced intricate designs on his chest. “I don’t know when that will stop feeling strange.”

“A day, at least.”

“I got over magic existing fast. Maybe I’ll get over this, too.”

“Get over it?”

She grinned and leaned over him, curls falling over his face. “So over it. My incredible husband. My mate. The man who showed me magic exists, including my own magic.”

A surge of protective love rose up inside him, his panther and human sides united in wonder.

“You’re the one who opened my eyes,” he reminded her.

“Opened your eyes to what it’s going to be like to be married to someone with the ability to see shifter auras.”

“You mean how she’s going to keep apologizing for disappearing to paint the happiest day of my life, when I’ve already forgiven her?” He kissed the tips of her fingers. “Your magic is like nothing anyone has ever seen. I can’t wait to see what else you will show me, Mrs. Diaz.”

He put his hands on her thighs and squeezed. She laughed, rolling her hips. “Do I need to check them, too?”

She captured his hands, kissing the palms and inner wrists, caressing him, and when she was done she put one of his hands on her hip and the other on her breast.

“How do you feel now?” she asked, her eyes dancing.

God above. This woman. “Do you want the answer that will make you groan, or the answer that will make you groan?” he asked, teasing the soft skin above the bodice of her dress.

She laughed and dark curls fell over her shoulders, a patch of darkness he took full advantage of. The bodice fell loose as easily as it had threatened to all day.

“Naughty.” She tsk’d. “You know how much this thing cost?”

“I know it has paint on the hem.”

“What? No! I was being careful!” She grabbed armfuls of her skirt, a fairy inspecting her personal magic cloud for imperfections, and he dived underneath her.

“You—you tricked me,” she complained, and gasped as he put his mouth to her again. “I was worried! The dressmaker worked so hard on it­—”

Grant worked hard, too.

Her thighs trembled either side of his face. She was hot, wet, intoxicating in all the best ways, and every single one of her desperate gasps etched themselves permanently in his memory.

Afterwards, she sank against him, hazy-eyed and glowing with satisfaction. His own need was a fire that she stoked with long, slow strokes, sliding her fingers and lips along him with the same care as she wielded her paintbrush. He clutched her curls in his fist, an anchor to know she was real, because this much bliss surely had to be a dream.

It wasn’t.

They moved on from the floor. Eventually. Reluctantly. And found another piece of the floor, a sturdy wall, furniture of a convenient height. The bath. He filled her more times than he could count, slow and sensuous as they stared into one another’s eyes and fast, almost frenzied as desire burned through his veins.

He couldn’t remember where his clothes ended up. Irina’s dress lay on a settee where he’d stripped it off her, inch by delicious inch, and devoured her again as she lay on it. She was his, and he was hers, body and heart and soul, and as they lay together on the enormous, luxurious bed afterwards, her body soft and pliant in his arms and her eyes alight with joy, he knew nothing would ever take that from them.

***

The sun peeked through the windows far sooner than it had any right to. Irina woke with her usual reluctance. She’d always hated getting up in the mornings, and now she had even more reason to stay deeply, contentedly snoozing.

Her husband.

It was possible she would never get out of bed again.

And after spending her teens and adult life so far working multiple jobs to still barely make rent, scrounging together pennies from gig work and knowing every second she stole for her art was a second she stole from anything resembling a secure life?

She was more than ready for some good, lazy lie-ins.

Or even some active ones…

But she also wanted to sketch. Paint. Anything. Not a portrait, but… an idea? A thought? She didn’t even know what she wanted to paint, just that her fingers itched with the need to do it.

And a few weeks later, she figured out why.

Their brief honeymoon was a fading memory. Shifters were still secret from the human world, but now they knew that the very secrecy that they all thought kept them safe had been used against them. Grant and his friends were spearheading an initiative to connect the splintered shifter communities better, but it was slow, hard work, for people who had always kept their true natures hidden.

Their natures had never been hidden from Irina. And more and more, wherever she looked, whether at humans or shifters, she felt as though the world was holding its breath on the precipice of monumental change.

And her and Grant’s world was about to change, too, in a far more normal way, but no less miraculous.

She snuck up on him at his desk, and he was good enough to pretend he hadn’t heard her coming from the other side of the house. He leaned back, tipping his head so she could kiss his forehead.

Then his eyes snapped open.

“Something’s happened,” he said, panther-green glossing over his eyes. “What is it?”

“Something we really should have seen coming,” she said, unable to hide her grin. “It’s not like we’ve been taking many precautions.”

His eyes widened. “You mean—”

“Congratulations, Mr. Diaz,” she purred. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

Read Irina and Grant’s story in Claimed by the Panther, or continue the series here!