Chimera and the Cat Burglar (FUC Academy #46)

Chapter 8

Chapter

Eight

Inside her Willow Wisp apartment, Boo wrestled with the information she’d gleaned from Ginnie as she looked over the statue.

But she didn’t feel like celebrating.

The elation of obtaining the artifact was clouded by the fact that her mother had been the one to betray her years ago.

Not only that, but she had a choice to make. Stick to her original plan of stealing the artifact for herself, to return it to her family, or allow Willy to bring it back to Alyce? He was on a high, excited that he’d accomplished his first mission, proving he was on his way to becoming a FUC agent.

And she didn’t want to take that away from him.

She also wasn’t sure that she cared about returning the artifact to her family. She’d been so convinced about its rightful home, but now, after what Ginnie had revealed, she wasn’t so sure it mattered anymore.

Actually, not much of anything seemed to matter anymore. Not after she’d learned the reason her mother rejected her: to protect her.

Not that she bought her mother’s efforts.

The one-bedroom apartment closed in on her. Trying to ground herself, she glanced down, but her muddy boots clouded her view, the dirt as thick as Cecilia’s betrayal.

Boo jostled the artifact, which seemed to sizzle in her hands. It seemed to call to her, and Willy stared, mesmerized.

“This statue is a pain in the ass,” she commented, setting it down. “I can’t wait to hand it off to Alyce.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Willy asked, seeming to understand she had a lot on her mind.

“I don’t know. I need to shower.” She stood in the lighted entryway, the rest of the apartment as dark as a tomb, and her heart, if she was honest.

“I need one, too.” Willy removed his boots and set them in the shoe tray adjacent to the front door.

Would he join her in the shower?

Was she ready for that, and possibly more?

He stepped toward her. “Let me help take your mind off of whatever is brewing behind your pretty eyes.”

Her mother’s betrayal wrapped her like black widow cobwebs and poisoned her. She admitted, “I’m nauseous and numb. I can’t get my mother’s disloyalty off my mind.”

Willy ran his hand down her arm. “I bet I can change that.”

There was no tentativeness in his hungry gaze. He’d known Boo long before today, knew her silence was a cry for help. But she cautioned herself. It would be so easy to allow her heart to embrace him again, but that wasn’t what this was. Willy had a future, a plan to be a globe-trotting agent. This? Only sex. Nothing more.

She warned, “This doesn’t mean we’re together, together. You can leave any time.”

“Whatever you say, Boo.” He picked her up, walked toward the kitchen counter as if she were weightless, and set her on the white granite, removing her boots. He used a kitchen towel to remove the mud crusted to her feet. “I know exactly what this is.”

Was she that coldhearted?

Or was he using her to meet his own needs?

Did he also crave comfort rather than disappointment?

Did it matter when he’d leave after graduation?

He lifted her shirt and let it fall to the laminate vinyl flooring. Making quick work of her tied waistband, he tugged her pants off and added them to the pile. He licked his lips.

Full, kissable lips . Boo had always loved kissing Willy. The softness the gorilla shifter controlled behind his brute strength never ceased to amaze her. The chimera he’d become was no less spectacular.

She was a refined feline, even in her human form, and Willy’s chimera strength could break her into pieces.

She massaged his muscular shoulders, exploring his corded, sinewy physique. “You’re magnificent.”

He peeled off his shirt and cast off his jeans, revealing dual cocks, which stood erect and ready inside his underwear. “Don’t build me up too much. It’s been a while.”

She didn’t expect her already choked-up voice to catch in her throat as she clung to his words. Had she been the last person he’d had sex with since their breakup four years ago?

Would she be his first all over again?

He covered himself with a hand. “I’m different now. I don’t know how this is going to work.”

She slid off the counter and moved closer, placing her hand over his before dropping to her knees. “I do.”

She blamed her heightened desire to please him on the magical statue as she pulled down his tented underwear and took him in her hands. Each member was long, thinner than she remembered, but together more than ample, and the left was slightly shorter than the right.

The spongy tips played along her lips as she teased one and then the other before taking the first into her mouth.

Salty, buttery, the precum at the tip was how she remembered. Willy was her guy, and fate had somehow miraculously brought them together to soothe each other, which was a jump after the trauma they’d both suffered.

She glanced up at him, catching the need flying out of his gaze. She sucked, earning an eye roll from him before he clasped her shoulders and pulled her to stand.

“You’ll make me come if you keep that up,” he growled.

“Kinda my plan.” She winked playfully, a first for her in a long time.

“I thought you’d get grossed out seeing me. Altered.”

“You mean double the pleasure?” she teased, and her core quickened.

“I’m not a gum commercial.”

He most certainly was not. The turn of events blew her mind, and desire had crept in, slowly at first and then wholly, the pain and web of betrayal unraveling. “No. You’re a wow.”

“You’re pretty wow yourself.” He pressed his lips to hers.

She motioned to his cocks as if saying, mind blown , and then a tiny voice stole her smile.

He’ll leave.

No. Love is forever.

He tugged her forward, a growl percolating in his chest. “Now, let me erase your mind’s background noise.”

Before she rebutted, he melded his lips against hers. A quick maneuver and her bra released her breasts. Willy slid one strap off her shoulder and then the other, letting the lacy garment fall to their feet. He used his thumbs to shimmy down her panties.

She kicked her thong into the pile and followed his lead, tucking her fingers into his underwear band and using a seesaw motion to guide them to the ground.

When they were both bare, he hoisted her over his shoulder, giving her a pat on the butt that sent tingles scattering across her body, and the sensation had nothing to do with the magic emanating from the statue.

He stalked into the darkness. “Bathroom?”

“Turn here.”

He smacked her ass again, earning a pleasure-filled yip from her before he flipped on the lights and set her down in front of the shower.

“Stay put,” he ordered, his mouth crooked with a sexy smile.

The water rained from the ceiling showerhead.

Willy tested the temperature. “It’s perfect.”

So was he. Everything he’d done so far had pulled Boo to the present.

The room steamed.

Or it could have been her view through her misty gaze.

He lifted her again and wrapped her legs around his waist.

The rock-hardness of his penile duplication pressed against her pussy, and she squirmed, trying to align herself.

The cool shower tiles barely quenched the inferno inside her when Willy backed her against the wall.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “This is nice.”

He lifted her by her thighs, teasing her with his cocks by shifting his hips. “I-I don’t know how this works.”

So, this was his first time after undergoing a mutation. Like snakes and lizards, had the mad scientist used squamate DNA when he infected Willy with chimera DNA so he’d become as unique as her?

A twist of Fate.

To quell his trepidation, she promised, “I know exactly how to make you feel like you were born for me.”

“Do you now?” he purred.

She lowered her arms, guiding each of his penises to her openings. She’d been born with didelphys, a rare condition of having a double uterus. Though Willy hadn’t noticed when they were together before, her vaginal canal actually was split in two by a thin membrane, and Willy had somehow morphed into her perfect sexual partner, having diphallasparatus.

What were the odds?

She didn’t want to let him see her tears of joy, but he brushed them away with the sweep of his thumb.

“Are you sure you want me?” he asked.

Consent was never in question. “Yes, but the reason for my tears isn’t what you think.”

“Tell me,” he said.

She held his gaze, forcing strength into her posture and her words. “I let my anger and shame keep me from loving the one person who meant the world to me, the person who’s my perfect match. I’ve wasted so much time, and there’s no way to get back what we had or backfill the gap.”

Her admission lifted a weight from her shoulders. She didn’t know if Willy still pictured a future with her—one filled with traveling and then returning to Willow Wisp when they were finally ready to settle down and start a family.

She didn’t pry. She refused to let prior trauma enter her new world.

But she admitted her regret. “Imagine what we could have been.”

“I’m holding on to what we are . Boo, you didn’t lose anything.” Willy kissed her. “You didn’t lose me. You won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”

She tightened her legs around his hips and pulled him deeper into her, fusing their union as he filled her up in more ways than sexually. “I love you, Will.”

He hadn’t told her he loved her back, but she took his eagerness, how he possessed her body, as a sign that, together, they’d fulfill new goals and dreams.

That, together, they’d solve significant problems.

She wasn’t sure who started to move first, whether she lifted her body, stroking him with her cores, or if he lifted her with his powerful arms. She clung to him, the burning heat inside her ramping up to something explosive.

“God, you’re amazing,” she said on a gasp.

The walls of the shower disappeared. Either that or she went blind from the orgasm that rushed forward.

He braced a hand against the wall and kept a steady rhythm. “Come for me, kitten.”

Her body seemed to float above their two as if they’d been there before—two souls coming together, repairing old wounds and mending hearts.

She rode the wave of ecstasy he endowed her with, euphoric waves pounding through her, mounting a cosmic tsunami that raced forward toward an apex of need before shattering into a trillion tiny pleasure pulses. “Don’t stop.”

He met her needs until she fell against him.

Maybe he felt her quivering core or sensed she wasn’t ready to unlock herself from around him. He held her, carrying her from the shower to her bedroom, their bodies wet as they fell onto the bed, where he reinserted himself.

“I don’t want to stop,” he said, a smoldering look in his dark gaze.

“Then don’t. I want you, Will. All of you. Even the parts that you don’t understand about yourself. I accept you, dicks and all.” She raked her nails down his back, not enough to slice but just enough to heighten his enjoyment.

His gaze darkened, he hardened, and the second orgasm they shared quaked her soul.

“Boo!” Willy collapsed on top of her.

His weight grounded her to reality—an uncomplete but healed reality.

There was only one thing left to do.

Yes, Boo was ready to face her past.

Willy lay beside her, drawing lines with his finger down her arm, and catching his breath. “What are you thinking about? I hope it’s not running.”

“Not a chance. What we just shared was epic.” She held his half-lidded gaze. “But I have to deal with my mom’s betrayal somehow.”

He propped his head on his arm. “What happened between the two of you?”

Boo hadn’t forgotten that Willy was dealing with the nightmare DIC put him through during her time in jail.

She explained, “Mom walked away when I got arrested. I don’t see why she abandoned me, comparing me to what my father did to her. I don’t understand how she made peace with ostracizing me.”

“Leaving you homeless.” Willy huffed, a snarl curling his upper lip.

Boo suspected he was as irritated by her mother’s actions as she was. That and attempting to understand her pain.

Boo asked, “Alyce told you about finding me on the streets?”

“No. Not exactly.” His hair fell across one eye when he shook his head. “Alyce would never betray a secret.”

Then how had Willy found out? Unless… “You did your own investigation?”

“I would have rescued you myself if Alyce hadn’t stepped in. When I saw you, knowing you hated me?—”

“I never hated you,” she shot back.

It was the truth. She could see that clearly now. She’d been angry at herself for pushing everyone away and blind to those who cared about her.

He cocked his head. “I don’t think your pride would have let you accept my help.”

Willy was right. She had been angry at the universe. Was her mother as well? Is that why she’d turned her back on Boo?

“So, Alyce showing up and offering me a place at the FUC Academy was your idea.” She mimicked him caressing her, touching the muscles that strained his exterior.

“I might have influenced her a bit, yeah. But she still had to vet you and had the last say,” he admitted.

Rapture swept Boo up, and she smiled.

Willy had acted selflessly even during his crisis.

She burrowed into his chest, her body still humming from making love. She pictured waking up to him for the rest of her life, and her feelings for him multiplied as the waning moon kissed the sleepy sunrise.

His soft snores wafted around her, and the weight of his body settled against hers.

Boo whispered, “Sweet dreams, my love.”

She understood her next move and pictured it as if she were viewing it on IMAX.

No future with Willy existed if she didn’t make peace with her mother.

Boo wasn’t in an exceptionally forgiving mood. Not yet. But she was ready to face the one person she’d tried to prove herself to all her life.

She had four hours before meeting Alyce at ten.

She’d be back in bed in an hour without Willy missing her. Then they could start their life together.

She understood power. Her mother’s phantom presence had orchestrated Boo’s whole life. It was time to confront Cecilia and take back control.

Boo slid out from under Willy, dressed, and quietly left the bedroom.

As she headed to the door, the artifact drew her attention.

She wasn’t sure why, but she decided to take it with her.

One hour. What could go wrong?