“Uh-huh.” Devan took the bag and stepped back.
Zio stepped forward before he could catch himself. Devan raised a wry brow, but Zio couldn’t bring himself to care. His base instincts outran his brain, and the need to touch Devan was abruptly overwhelming. He took another step, closing the distance between them until they were an inch apart.
Devan was shorter than him, slimmer, but his body, frustratingly hidden by clothes, was lithe and powerful. Zio pondered what his shifter form could be. Agile and beautiful, he’d moved through the trees with a grace that told Zio he was no wolf, but he’d known that already. When the time came for them to choose, Shadow Clan rarely took the form of a wolf. Most of them were big cats, like their leaders, but that hardly narrowed it down.
“You wanna stop looking atmelike that?”
Devan’s voice was low, barely a whisper, and laced with enough of a growl to snap Zio out of his daze. Zio clenched his fists to keep his hands at his sides. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Yes, you are, and it’s not fair if you’re going to rip my head off every time I glance your way.”
“Last time I checked, your head was on your shoulders.”
Glorious fucking shoulders. Zio still couldn’t believe Devan was smaller than him. In the club, he’d seemed huge, his presence so imposing Zio had submitted to him the moment they’d found each other, lured by his scent and powerless to resist the desire to devour every part of Devan he’d been coordinated enough to touch. Warm skin, strong jaw, hard chest. Zio’s head swam, and frustration erupted, spilling out of him with a furious growl. “Fuck! How does this not affect you? I’m losing my mind.”
He whirled away, intent on shifting and making a run for it until he was far enough away to regain his composure, but Devan caught him. His grip on Zio’s wrist was firm, but the hold on a deeper part of Zio was absolute. “Wait.”
Zio closed his eyes, impatience, panic, and utter bewilderment battling for dominance in his fucked-up soul. “Why?”
Devan didn’t answer with words. He put his hands on Zio’s shoulders and turned him around, pinning him in place. “Trustme, this is affecting me. More than you’ll ever know.”
“I want to know.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t want me here at all.”
“That’s—” But the argument died on Zio’s lips. Devan was right—he didn’t want him here. He wished he’d never come, that they’d never met, so he could go back to the long days and nights when grief and revenge were the only things on his mind. Emotions he understood. Pain he could take a hundred times more than the bone-deep ache in his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”
A breeze shook the forest. Zio harnessed himself to the earth and felt the ground shake as desperation ripped through him. A nearby tree splintered.
Devan sucked in a breath. “The gods was that?”
“It’s you driving me crazy.” Zio snapped his eyes open. “What are you doing to me? Why do you have this... thing over me?”
Devan growled again. “What makes you think it’s so one-sided? That this is what I want?”
The ache in Zio’s chest increased tenfold. “If you don’t want me, let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For the same reason you can’t push me away.”
Zio had been lost for weeks, adrift on a tide he couldn’t contain, but the impact of Devan’s words was so great he swayed on his feet, kept upright only by Devan’s unwavering grip on his shoulders. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. We just need to ignore it until it goes away.”
Zio frowned. “Until what goes away?”
“You really don’t know?”
Zio shook his head, and a helplessness crept into Devan’s intense gaze. He opened his mouth. Shut it again.
Then he sighed. “This would be a hell of a lot easier if you weren’t naked.”
Zio glanced down at himself, unsurprised to see he was hard. On the rare occasions shifting wasn’t accompanied by violence or a desperate need to escape the world, it always left him horny. And Devan had already proved the effect he had on Zio’s cock.
He shuddered as another gust of wind rattled through the clearing. His skin burnt where Devan touched him, but it was nothing compared with the need thrumming in his groin. The heat. The desire. The pure power that flowed between them.Gods, I want him.