Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
Cillian was frustrated. He’d spent the last two classes trying to figure out which of the females were exuding that scent. He’d spent most of the last class examining each of them, trying to draw out the scent with his gaze, calling to that deep part of them that would respond to his beast.
A few had showed some promise – the brunette who always sat at the end of the second row, the redhead in the middle of the first row, the two blondes in the third row, and the one with the dyed hair in the last chair of the fourth row. But although that helped narrow it down, it wasn’t conclusive. Whoever she was, she had some intense will power to resist his call. And he couldn’t tell if those two had seemed to react were doing so out of a shared instinctual need, or out of pure human lust.
Locking up his office for the weekend, he was happy he’d ridden his bike into work that day; he could use the physical exercise to get rid of all that residual energy in his limbs. The hilly, Bronxville neighborhood where he lived offered a challenging ride, but his natural strength made it the perfect balm for a troubled mind.
But that evening, the ride simply wasn’t enough. He couldn’t stop thinking of the smell, driving him crazy, how he was only just barely keeping it together in class.
You swore she’d be the last one, the only one,
he told himself, remembering the woman he’d once loved with every ounce of his being. The one who had claimed to love him back.
The one who’d left.
You’re drawn to this student, whoever she is, out of pure physical instinct,
he lectured to himself, as though he himself was a student who needed to be set straight.
You’re smart, too smart to give in to it.
Except, when she was in that class, it was the only thing he could think of. It was like his mind shut down entirely, his lecture a robotic response to stimuli while his panther paced, back and forth and back and forth, seeking her, seeking the girl who was releasing that scent…
In those moments, he wasn’t smart at all. Far from it. He was pure cat, the predator, an animal enslaved to its lust. Not knowing which student was giving off that scent was exquisite torture, but it was also the only thing keeping him from pursuing her at all costs. Because, though he longed to withstand the call of his beast, he knew that once he looked into her eyes, as soon as their fingers brushed, as soon as he knew for sure…
Well, it would only get worse after that.
Sun was just setting when he arrived at his brownstone. The air was heavy with a coming storm. He was still tense, however, and decided that it would be a good night to release his panther in the nearby park. He didn’t generally like doing it, preferring to wait until he could take a weekend in the Catskills or a few weeks in the Adirondacks, where there was far more room and far fewer people. But tonight he knew he needed the release.
After a quick dinner eaten standing up in the dark kitchen, he slipped out once more, this time wearing only jogging shorts and a tight shirt. He ran to the park; by the time he got there, dark had fallen, though the rain was still hovering in the clouds above, not yet dampening the earth. The air around him crackled with energy, not unlike the energy in his own soul.
Finding the darkest part of the wooded park, where the trees were dense and the forest spread out for a few acres, he stripped, hiding his clothes in the shelter of a rock. As though he and the weather was one, the rain began to fall in soft patters on his bare skin. With a shudder of release, he felt his panther emerging. Slowly at first, his eyes turning to pure amber, his teeth lengthening; fur emerging through his pores. Then all at once, and he fell to all fours, the rain coming down harder now, making his black fur sleek and shiny.
The world changed from the human world to the animal world, where nothing looked quite the same, and every smell was like a vision, every sound a sensation. A growl rumbled through his throat and he lunged forward, testing his claws against a tree trunk before racing to a large-limbed oak. He leapt to the lowest branch, then upwards once more, taking in the acres below him. Pacing along the branch, he licked his lips, feeling his whiskers quiver as raindrops fell against them.
And then he was off, running silently through the woods, smelling the loamy earth and the traces of other animal, the rain pelting him harder and harder, cooling him down, his soul finally quieting, quieting, until there was nothing but him, the forest, and the rain.
Cindy couldn’t focus. It was Sunday, and she’d had three days to complete the simple assignment for Professor Turick’s class. Granted, she had wasted a good deal of Saturday in bed nursing a slight hangover from the night before; she
was
a college student, after all, despite her dedication to her work.
But the reason she couldn’t settle down and write up the two paragraphs had nothing to do with lack of time or energy. She knew the material well enough to have completed the task in less than an hour. She’d managed to clean her suite from top to bottom, make a batch of muffins for breakfast for the coming week, and read far in advance for all her other classes.
No, the reason she couldn’t focus on the assignment was because she was starting to have very, very strange feelings about the class itself. And the subject material was hitting rather close to home.
A human female who is shifter-receptive will exude an idiosyncratic scent, only detectable by shifters of the species with which she is compatible. Shifter-receptive females tend to have lower-than-normal sexual drive when confronted with non-shifter males, but higher-than-normal sexual drive when encountering shifter males. A shifter-receptive female may be unnaturally susceptible to the shifter’s pheromones and extrasensory mating calls, more so than non-receptive females, though they, too, can be affected by these same reproductive tools.
A shifter male who comes in contact with a shifter-receptive female of his species will be able to tell from her scent as well as her level of responsiveness to his mating call. However, one-on-one contact is required for both parties to ensure the compatibility. A shifter who senses a receptive female in a large group will likely go to great lengths to discover which female is exuding the scent. Studies indicate that shifter males undergo significant distress when a female exuding the scent passes them by in a crowd and they cannot attain the one-on-one meeting necessary to confirm compatibility and result in mating.
Exact figures of the numbers of shifter-receptive females are hard to come by, though genetic testing suggests that females receptive to wolf shifters make up the greatest population, with 50% of shifter-receptive females compatible with wolf shifters. Bear and feline shifter-receptive females make up 20% and 10% of the remainder of the population, respectively, with the final 20% receptive to heretofore uncategorized mammalian, avian and reptile shifters. It is estimated that only 2-3% of the world’s female population is shifter-receptive, making finding a mate a matter of utmost importance to most shifters, regardless of the species.
Cindy had read and reread the words over and over again. They made her tempted to believe something she knew couldn’t be true. It was all in her imagination, a funny coincidence that what she was studying happened to be similar to what she was feeling. It was a convenient explanation that would give her strange feelings towards Professor Turick some excuse, some reasoning.
Because try as she might to deny it, she couldn’t help but realize that what she felt for him, ever since the moment he’d dragged her into his eyes, was pure, unadulterated lust. Cindy, being eternally practical, had actually made a list of the things she felt when her mind wandered to her handsome, silky-voiced professor:
Head rush – like being tipsy, or woozy ?Increased heart rate Sweaty palms Stomach turning – in good way Forget to breathe? Thighs clenching – throbbing between legs…
And she’d cross-referenced that list with every website that popped up when she Googled “what does it feel like to be attracted to someone”?
Check. Check. Check, check, check.
Groaning and leaning back in her seat, Cindy had to admit that she was lusting after Professor Turick.
And that terrified her.
Especially because it
was
uncanny, wasn’t it? More strange was the fact that she’d never been attracted to anyone before – ever. The way his gaze had made her feel - paralyzed and aroused and scared all at once. The way he stalked across the room while delivering his lectures, feral and…feline. Those green eyes that weren’t really quite green, but more like yellow.
As the hours dripped by, the night getting later and later, Cindy realized she couldn’t go to class the next day. The very idea of it made her want to throw up. But she wasn’t going to drop the class entirely; she couldn’t, without paying the price in credits. She just needed another day…or two…before facing him again. She wanted to talk to Sam, who’d gone up to visit some friends at a state school for the weekend. She wanted to give herself time to figure out what she was going to do. She needed it.
With that resolution in mind, she finally managed to get the summary completed. She e-mailed it to Jenna, asking her friend if she could print it and hand it in with her own paper, claiming that she was too ill from “the bug going around” to make it to class. She considered emailing Professor Turick to say the same, but even the thought of emailing him made her fingers shaky.
How in the hell am I going to get through this semester,
she lamented, crawling between her blanket and sheets.
She should have been able to fall asleep easily after that – after all, she’d gotten the assignment done, and she’d already made the decision to give herself some extra time to come to grips with this crush, or whatever it was. But instead, she lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, remembering the dark forest her mind was dragged to whenever her eyes lingered too long on Professor Turick…the dark forest where passion throbbed wet and damp as the leaves in the undergrowth…the dark forest where something stalked, back and forth, tail whipping softly…
She wasn’t there. The smell, it wasn’t there. Cillian had waited as calmly as he could as the students filed in. The more seats filled, the more hopeful Cillian got that the girl was running late; then, when she came in alone, he would have no problem picking out her scent, knowing exactly who it was that was driving him slowly insane.
But as the clock ticked past the time for class to start and the door shut and stayed shut, she still hadn’t arrived. A few innocent coughs from the audience in front of him reminded him that he was there to teach, not to find a mate – he didn’t want a mate, anyway.
Roll call will tell me,
he thought suddenly, and tried to keep a shake from his voice as he started reading out the names.
“Jenna Bradbury.”
“Here.”
“Cornelia Bratts.”
“Here.”
“Justin Caldwell.”
“Here.”
“Cindy Corning.”
Silence. His eyes flicked up. The seat next to Jenna – one of the blondes he’d pegged as a possibility – was empty. Immediately, his mind conjured up the memory of the other girl, the other blonde, the voluptuous one with the freckles and the cute ponytail and the generous chest and the rolling hips and…
“Cindy Corning,” he repeated, this time saying the name like he was reciting a prayer.
Cindy Corning…
“She’s sick,” Jenna piped up. “Got the bug. Gave me her assignment.”
Cillian’s blood boiled. Illogically, he felt stood up. He felt that the thing he was supposed to have – the thing he deserved to have – was being denied him. The memory of her smell wafted through his mind, almost as strong as if she’d been right there in front of him. He heard himself growling low in his throat and, with a sudden shock of reality, realized he was standing in front of a room of students fuming for no reason.
“If anyone missed what I said the first class,” he said, aiming to cover the awkward silence with some tough love. “I don’t take kindly to absences. Moving on…”
Somehow, Cillian managed to get through the rest of roll call and class, and shut himself in his office to try and think his way out of the predicament. He’d thought that not having her scent in his nostrils would make it better. But knowing what she looked like made it worse.
Now, he could see her small, full lips in his mind, could combine the vision with the memory of the smell. Desperate, he whipped through the papers that had been handed in that day, finding hers and holding it to his nose, hoping that if she’d handled it at all he might be able to smell her on it. But nothing. Frustrated, he threw it back in the pile.
He paced back and forth in his office, a constant growl in his throat. He tried to shoo the unwelcome images from his mind, but they were relentless. He couldn’t stop thinking of how it would feel to part her creamy white thighs, to lap at the sweetness between them; he imagined her nipples, whether they’d be rosy and small or wide and brown; he imagined her hair in his hand as he kissed her neck, his cock buried deep inside her, making her cry and moan in ecstasy….
For a feline shifter, nothing came before his mate’s pleasure. Shifter-receptive females of the feline persuasion were so few and far between that when you found one, you’d do anything to keep her. Protect her from any harm, dote on her with gifts and affection, make her come until she couldn’t see straight…
That wasn’t enough to keep Lila, though,
he thought, a stabbing pain in his stomach. He’d had to leave England because of the woman who’d left him, who’d been afraid of devoting herself body and soul to him when he’d been eager to do the same.
To live knowing she was somewhere in the same country, possibly bearing some other shifter’s kits…it had been maddening. He’d nearly done something awful out of anguish…he couldn’t let that happen again. No matter how young and sweet and delicious this girl was…
Slamming himself down at his desk, he opened his e-mail and, scanning through the list of his students, found her school address. He typed out his message, nearly breaking the keyboard in his fervor. He had to end this now, before it got worse.