Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Preston

I'm not sure how to feel.

All right, that's bullshit. I feel incredible. With Liz's body against mine, I wonder how in the world I went almost four years without recognizing how beautiful the girl is. How in the world did it never cross my mind to sleep with her.

I'm closer to Liz than any other person I know. I'm certainly closer to her than any other non-shifter, so I really don't understand how in the world it never occurred to me that there was compatibility in our relationship that went beyond friendship.

I'd love to say that I was just too careful, that I didn't want to risk messing our relationship up. The problem is that even though I would like to say I was too careful; I know it would be a pure bullshit thing for me to say. I wasn't too careful. I wasn't afraid of the risk.

Until a very short while ago, I never looked at Liz as someone with whom I could have anything other than a completely platonic relationship. I never considered Liz someone more than a friend. I don't know exactly how except maybe just because I knew her when she was just a teenage kid. Maybe that set her up as untouchable in my mind.

And then, she was so helpful and wonderful when my wife became my ex-wife that I just didn't think about her in any other light. She was someone I could rely on, someone who didn't play games or… Well, she wasn't my wife is pretty much the point. She wasn't my wife and she was just, what, seventeen?

Maybe she was already eighteen but I'd known her for some time already so I thought of her as the teenage girl down the street, not as a romantic interest at all. Certainly not as a sexual interest. Panthers are, at our core, practical rather than emotional. We tend to see what is directly in front of us without the context of the rest of the world.

We're the doers of the shifter world. We're not the planners like the tigers or the administrators like the lions. We're also not the half-cocked emotionally driven ones like the wolves. We're not the mountain man hermit loners like the bears, either.

Look, these are broad strokes. They're generalizations but they're not nearly as generalized as comments about ethnicities are when it comes to humans. We have natures that are built into our being. Shifter society is built along those natures, and that's why Lions have royalty and very regimented social structure. Wolves have smaller packs. Bears…

Damn it, I'm thinking about anything I can so I don't have to think about the fact that Elizabeth Flores has her naked body pressed against mine. I'm doing all I can to avoid thinking about the fact that Liz's head is on my shoulder and I can feel her breath over my chest. I'm doing all I can to avoid thinking about how everything that happened last night felt perfect and right.

If I were a wolf, I could just go with the emotions and the desire and throw everything else out the window but…

Damn it. There I go again. It's a habit of shifters. Spend enough time with us and you'll see us regularly attribute everything we do to our shifter nature. It's a nice built-in excuse for anything bad about us, I think. It's a crutch, though. Really, wolves can be very effective administrators and lions can bring passion to an enterprise. There's a hilarious comedian who's actually a bear shifter.

We're human and animal. Each of us. If there's one thing that we all know it's that our nature is fluid.

Fuck this. Okay, time to put this to rest. I do know I'm not quite ready to have Joel find his dad with the babysitter. So, as carefully as I can, I slip out from bed, being as silent and careful as I can be to not wake her.

Now this is a time when my panther shifter nature comes in handy. I smile slightly at my stupid thought and then, grimace. Fuck me, it has been a really long time since I've been in a relationship.

I decide to go ahead and take a quick shower. I never got the chance to get the smell of the fire off me and, well, again, I feel I need to keep everything neat and tidy about this whole relationship…? Uh… this whole event… Um, this whole fucking thingy?

Well, there's another deflection tool, but this one's all too human. Humor. My mind wants to make jokes rather than make any sense of what has happened between me and Liz.

I go to her spare bathroom and start the water. The spray of the shower feels so damn wonderful. I find some hand soap and some shampoo and go ahead and take some. It smells like Liz and I instantly see her beneath me, reaching for me, kissing me.

Damn it! I finish up and dry off and get dressed. The entire time, I try to set my thoughts of Liz aside. I need to deal with this when I'm not exhausted from having just fought a massive fire.

I walk down the hall and step into the spare bedroom. Joel is curled up in a corner of the bed, and I get that hard pang in my heart I always get when I see him right after a fire. I feel so incredibly lucky to have him. It hasn't been easy, but he's the best part of my life.

I shake his shoulder softly and whisper. "Hey there, big guy, we're gonna head home."

It takes a bit, but Joel finally cracks his eyes open and slowly, he recognizes me. "Dad? Did you do okay? Is the fire out?"

"It bit the dust."

He smiles. "Awesome, Dad."

"Look, buddy, we need to get home, so if you have anything here let's grab it and go. But don't be noisy because Liz is still asleep and we don't want to be rude and wake her up."

He nods and gives me a wink that involves both eyes. I grin and give him a thumbs-up as he manages to get out of bed without too much noise.

I take his hand in mine and again, like a recurring nightmare, I think of how lucky I am to have my son and how terrified I'd be if he were ever in danger like those people tonight. He really is my world.

But now there's someone else making my world a little bigger, a little different. I picture Liz and my heart clenches in fear the same way. I haven't really been with anyone since my divorce and, honestly, I'm a little gun-shy about the thought of dating again.

That's such a fucking load of bullshit. I'm a whole fucking lot gun-shy about dating again.

Now, something happened right in my own backyard, and I don't know what to do with it.

Liz is an amazing girl. Strike that. She's a woman now. An amazing, incredible, funny, sweet woman who seems willing and able to push my boundaries. So, what scares me so much about making Liz a bigger part of my life? It's not really the shifter thing and it's not the firefighter thing. What is making my mind fight against my heart about this? Why the hell am I running home so late at night?

We get outside and it's still dark. Joel stumbles and I sweep him up into my arms. Poor guy is still sleepy. "Okay, buckaroo, let's go home." He settles his head on my shoulder, "Okay, Daddy," he whispers and almost instantly falls back asleep.

I hold him tighter to me. My little hero.

I'm so damn thankful he's mine, my family, and he's all I've got.

And then I make a tentative correction to that thought.

Liz. She's there.

I walk us home and with each step I'm reminded of how wonderful it was to be with her tonight and how very quiet the night seems now that I've left her behind.

Temporarily?

Damn it, one thing I know is that I'm not going to wrestle with this for long. I'm a panther, damn it, not a fucking lynx.