Page 104 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

Then she was kissing me again, hips picking up an even more punishing rhythm than before. But I wasn’t complaining. No, if anything, I was learning. Making out with my fiancée in a sort of blended wolf-human form was a lot different than how it was before. Different, but no less thrilling. In the morning, I’d fully have to wrap my mind around the fact that werewolves existed and I wasn’t crazy for all the things I had noticed, but for now, that didn’t matter. What mattered was the two of us.

And the fact that if she kept going like she was, I was going to come way before she did. That simply wouldn’t do.

So, with what little sanity I had left, I reached between us to rub her swollen clit. I circled it first, and when I could feel her walls begin to flutter around me, I focused on rubbing it the way she liked.

“God, fuck, Keith! Like that! Just like that!”

It was the perfect chance to spur me on, and I bit my tongue to hold the line until, finally, I felt her clamp down on me. I watched in rapture as her orgasm played about her features, but I only got to enjoy it for a moment or two before my own climax hit me hard enough to send shockwaves through my body.

Pleasure, exhilaration, love, lust… it hit me all at once, erasing any other worries or doubts or distractions that might have been simmering in the back of my mind. I rode the wave, which was a bit like weathering the world’s most perfect storm, and when I came down, I had the privilege of watching the love of my life still riding her high.

“There you go, that’s it. You look so perfect like that,” I murmured as I slowly released pressure on her clit before stopping entirely. Although we toyed around with overstimulation from time to time, now was not the time for it.

Once she was down, I pulled her into my arms and slowly eased us onto my non injured side so that we were lying face to face. Once I felt capable of movement, I gently kissed her chin, the tip of her nose, her forehead, and finally her lips. There was no hurry in my actions, and the pecks were chaste compared to what we had just done, but it still felt right.

We had a new world to wake up to in the morning, one where I was going to have to face that humans weren’t exactly the top of the food chain and there were who knew how many magical creatures in existence. But that could wait for the morning, because now was for Olivia and me. Two lovers who, despite all the odds, were managing to make it work.

“I love you,” I murmured again, tugging Olivia forward so our bodies were aligned. I always loved when she hitched her leg over my thigh, something that seemed wildly uncomfortable to me, but it settled her.

“I love you too. From the bottom of my heart.”

We kissed again, slow and sweet, without a care in the world. Sleep pulled at me. However, before my eyelids could slam shut and I could dream of happily-ever-afters with the woman next to me, Olivia spoke.

“Oh, and Keith?”

“Yes, my love?”

“We prefer to call ourselves shifters. Not werewolves.”

“Good to know.”

23

KEITH

A FATHER’S BLESSING

When life was difficult—and finding out that my fiancée was a mythological shapeshifting creature wasn’t exactly easy—I found that doing something with my hands and shutting off the majority of my brain was the best way to process things without winding myself up into a tizzy.

So, I worked on my canoe.

I hadn’t touched it in many months because I’d been working on the wedding pergola, but when I heard that most of the Rizolis got married in Olivia’s backyard, I wanted to make something the couple could stand under while celebrating their big day with everyone that they loved. Hopefully, others would also make use of it because I doubted I could make personalized wedding pergolas for every couple.

Then again, considering how loaded Olivia and her family were, she could probably buy the supplies ten times over and not even blink.

That was almost harder to wrap my head around than the whole werewolf thing.

Ah, sorry, shifter thing.

Because while some parts of lore were correct with the aversion to silver and wolfsbane, the affliction wasn’t transferable with a bite and was also less affliction and more an inheritance. From what Olivia had told me, they were shapeshifters. Close to the dawn of the universe, they had been chosen by some deity or another to take the form of a wolf.

They had enhanced strength, incredibly fast reflexes, accelerated healing, and lived much longer than humans. So Nonna Rizoli had not been exaggerating her age.

“At least my life is truly never boring,” I mused to myself as I continued to mount strips to the hull. I was nearing the center, where I’d have to use the circular saw to custom-cut a piece of wood since the strips weren’t the right shape for that final piece when everything beautifully came together.

Is that a metaphor for my life?

Before my mother had decided to move out, I thought my life was perfectly orderly. Just the way it needed to be. But I’d since learned it hadn’t been orderly, it had been safe, boringly so, and now it was so full of different experiences, flavors, and people.