Archive of Our Own ^beta

Derek was in my bedroom. The moonlight illumated the barest hints of his features—strong, straight brows, the sharp line of his jaw, the cords of muscle under his gray t-shirt. He was looking at me. His eyes were ringed in pure gold.

I knew all the reasons this was a bad idea. We were in a professional partnership; we were both leaders of significant powers that could one day oppose each other; we hadn’t resolved all the issues from our parting eight years ago. I knew he was attracted to me, could feel the searing heat in his gaze, but I also recognized that his sudden attraction was likely because of my brand new face and body. In all probability, he wasn’t here to have sex with Julie Olsen; he was here for Aurelia Ryder.

But I didn’t care. Not enough anyways to stop me from moving across the room towards him, stopping so close I could feel his heat lapping against my skin. Not enough to stop me from raising my hands to his cheeks, running my fingers over the angles and divots I knew so well, tracing the knobs of his trachea, the line of his collarbone. He had become deathly still by the time I laid my palms flat against his chest.

We breathed together, our movements in perfect sync. It seemed the air that passed out of him entered me. We were our own world, self-sustaining.

“Julie,” he said softly, and my body—traitorous thing—trembled at the sound.

I moved closer, my chest just brushing his, and looked up at him. “Please.”

Derek had impeccable self-control, but I’d always prided myself on being his one weakness—and it was gratifying to see his eyes flare, feel his hands tighten possessively around my waist, and know that of all that had changed over the past eight years, this, at least, hadn’t.

His mouth met mine, made forceful by raw need, and I opened automatically to let him in. My body shuddered, and I pressed myself closer to him, molding my curves to the flat hardness of him, running my hands up his arms to feel the muscles bunch and ripple before sliding them into his hair. My fingernails scratched lightly at his scalp, and he groaned, dragging my hips up to meet his. His mouth left mine to move to my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. Every touch left a blossom of fire in its wake.

As a street kid, I’d learned to quickly categorize situations into safe and not-safe. Derek was safety in its purest form, a rightness to the way our bodies fit together that flooded me with warmth and melted away all the hardness I’d accumulated. In the circle of his arms, with the scent and feel of him the only sensations I could process, I felt like I’d finally come home.

He growled low in his throat and lifted me by my waist. I wrapped my legs around his hips and dropped my face into the crook of his neck, gasping as his mouth worked at my collarbone. He was moving now, and then there was the searing press of his hands against my back as he lowered me to the bed. His kisses were hot and aggressive, but his touch was achingly gentle. It was incredible to see all that power so carefully corralled, all that intense energy focused on me. Just the way he looked at me—with a quiet, desperate hunger—made wet heat pool between my thighs.

“Derek,” I said, and my voice was—almost reverant. I couldn’t help it. I loved him, loved him with every fiber of my being, and my body had a visceral reaction to him. I needed him surrounding me, part of me. I needed him in me.

The thought made my cheeks flare with heat. I wasn’t a prude—far from it. I’d had plenty of flings over the past several years. But there was something about Derek that reduced me to a starry-eyed teenager again, writhing with unrequited longing.

And gods, the way he was looking at me... I could hardly stand it. I reached up, and he lowered himself on top of me, long eyelashes shuttering closed as he kissed me again. It was softer this time, less hungry but no less charged with heat. He kissed me like he was tasting me, memorizing me. My hands fisted in his t-shirt and tugged upwards.

He broke away and looked at me, eyes wild with gold. “Are you sure?”

“Take the damn shirt off,” I snapped, and he grinned, a flash of silver in the dark. With one smooth, graceful movement, he slid the shirt over his shoulders and tossed it to a corner of the room.

Oh wow. I’d seen Derek shirtless before—seen him full commando, too, because there really was no avoiding it with shapeshifters. But context was everything. And in this context, in my bedroom, on my bed, and gods, in between my thighs, Derek’s shirtless torso was all of a sudden the eighth wonder of the goddamn world.

He gave me no time to admire him, though. With a growl, he fell back on top of me, working his hands under my shirt and brushing his fingers along the wire of my bra as he kissed down my chest. I gasped his name and arched my back into his warmth. His fingers slide to my back, fiddling with the hooks of my bra with uncharacteristic clumsiness.

“I feel like a fucking virgin,” Derek muttered, and I laughed softly. Holding his gaze with mine, I reached behind me and unhooked the bra myself, shrugging it and my shirt off with slow, sensual movements.

“Jesus.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “No—Julie. Jesus is the dude on the cross.”

He was looking at my bare chest, the goosebumps spattering my breasts. His pupils were dilated, a brilliant gold, sparking with a primal sort of hunger that sent delicious shivers up my spine.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said in a low voice, and I flushed.

“Well, yes. Moloch’s eye made sure of that.”

He shook his head slowly. “It isn’t Moloch’s anything. It’s all you, Julie. God. I—God.”

“Taking the Lord’s name in vain?” My voice was a little breathless. I couldn’t help it, not while he was looking at me like I was some sort of goddess in the flesh.

He was still looking at me. Finally, he lowered himself down and slowly, deliberately, licked a stripe from between my breasts up to the hollow of my clavicle. His eyes flicked up to mine.

“Eight years,” he murmured. “I used to dream about what you’d look like. How you’d move, and laugh, and speak, and whether any of it had changed.”

Disappointment flared cold in my chest. “I’m not exactly... Julie anymore.”

“No, that’s the thing.” He laughed softly, his breath ghosting across my skin. “You’re exactly the same. Sure, you look different. Your scent is different. But your mannerisms, your actions, everything that’s you—that’s still the same. I don’t care if you look like Aphrodite or Baba Yaga. I’d know you anywhere.”

Before I could say anything—not that I had anything prepared, because really, how do you top that?—he rushed to continue.

“Those two years I spent in Atlanta after you left, they were hell. I was... lost. I kept looking for you. I’d be on a job, and I’d keep looking behind me as if you’d suddenly appear on your stupid horse with the flower braids, carrying your tomahawk and humming some random pop song. I’d make dinner and accidentally make too much, because... because I somehow expected you to walk through the door and join me.

“You left your windbreaker, and I couldn’t—I didn’t know what to do with it. I probably should’ve given it away, but it smelled like you. And every night I’d sit there, alone, staring at it and wondering if you were okay, if you were safe. If you were thinking of me, too.”

“Derek...” My throat was tight.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said quietly. “I just needed you to know.”

I shook my head, frustrated, and cupped his face between my hands. “Derek, you idiot, I missed you every goddamn second of every day. I drove Erra up the wall telling her about you. The great Derek Gaunt, warrior extraordinaire, etcetera. Gods, it was a running joke among my closest companions in Shinar. I used to sit by my window with my metal rose and just... stare out at the world. Like you’d come running up over the horizon. They teased me mercilessly for it.”

He stared up at me, shock mingling with something else in his expression. Vulnerability? I smiled down at him, impossibly fond. “My stupid wolf. I’ve been hopelessly in love with you since I first met you.”

“And now?” he murmured.

I whacked his shoulder lightly. “Why do you think I’m in bed with you?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? My body’s been known to make women do crazy things.”

It was such an un-Derek thing to say that I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m immune to your charms, you bastard.”

“Immune to my charms, but hopelessly in love with me?” He grinned. “Doesn’t make much sense.”

I huffed. “Forget about the hopelessly in love thing. I was lying.”

“No, no.” He pressed a series of kisses down my chest again, then pressed his tongue flat against one nipple. Caught in a surge of pleasure, I arched my back. “I like the hopelessly in love stuff. Please, tell me more.”

“Over my dead body,” I grumbled—or tried to, but it came out as a sort of breathy moan.

“Mm, and what was that about Derek Gaunt, warrior extraordinaire?” He punctuated his question by biting gently on one nipple, drawing a strangled cry out of me.

It took me several embarrassingly long moments to recover my speech, made more difficult by Derek’s increasingly distracting ministrations. “That was... hyperbole... ah.”

His mouth had moved to my lower abdomen, his tongue moving in lazy circles under my navel. Heat throbbed in my core, aching for release. I twisted, trying to move his mouth down, but he caught my hips in his hands and held me steady. Slowly, slowly, he began to work his way down.

I bit off a moan as he brushed his lips against the line of my panties, tongue flickering out to lick my skin. “Just... get to it, already.”

“Patience is a virtue,” he murmured against my skin, sending electricty arcing up my body. His teeth nipped at the fabric of my panties and pulled. They tore right off.

“You owe me new panties,” I said, but there was no bite to it. I was far too excited about the way he was looking at my center.

“Put it on my tab,” he said, and then he bent his head between my legs.

And—wow. I could count on one hand how many times a guy had made me orgasm, and from the first lick of Derek’s tongue at my core, I knew I was nearly at the brink. He hadn’t even entered me yet; it was like I was an inexperienced teenager again.

I rested the back of my hand against my forehead, eyes fluttering, body shuddering as Derek worked me closer and closer. One warm hand slid up the inside of my thigh, his fingers joining his tongue in exploring me, and when one finger slid inside me, I broke. Pleasure surged through me, cascading like water through interconnected pools, and for a moment I saw stars. Derek’s name poured from my lips like an incantation, and dimly I could see him pulling away to watch me, his eyes wide, pupils blown. My skin glowed faintly with an aura of magic and pure pleasure.

“Julie,” he said, and his voice was strained with longing. “Oh, my God.”

I couldn’t speak. I just stretched my arms out to him, and with a wolf’s sinewy grace, he pulled himself up alongside my body and pressed himself to me. His breathing was just as ragged as mine, though I hadn’t even properly touched him yet. He’d been undone just by watching me.

“Eight years is enough,” he said quietly. “You and I—we’re done with the separation shit. No more.”

“No more,” I agreed, pressing my lips to his. It would take forces beyond this world to pull me away from him again.