Free Moonshine by Moira Rogers Page A

if he happened to have a bottle of moonshine in his pocket. So
instead, she settled for a vague reply. "If I wanted to do the
stuff I usually do, I wouldn't be here."
    He nodded. "Hey,
Wanda. Give us a couple of shots of Johnnie Walker, yeah?"
    Claire waited until the
woman set a shot glass in front of her. Then she picked it up and
tossed it back, coughing a little as the liquid burned its way down
her throat.
    When she managed to
blink away the reflexive tears that sprang to her eyes, she found him
watching her. "It's a long way from milk and cookies."
    “ Yeah.” He
threw back his own shot without blinking. "I'm Lars."
    "Lars."
Claire dropped the shot glass back on to the bar. "Hi. I'm
Claire."
    Lars nodded to Wanda,
and she brought over two more shots. He let his eyes roam over Claire
again. Her baggy T-shirt and loose jeans hid her body, but he'd seen
her before. Her innocent blue eyes and sweet, freckled face were
completely at odds with her lush, voluptuous body. She was like a
naughty librarian fantasy come to life, even dressed down with her
auburn hair in a sloppy ponytail.
    He slid one of the
small glasses toward her. "Just how different do you want your
night to be, doll?"
    She didn't choke this
time; just made a face and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before
turning that haunted blue gaze back on him. "Really, really
different."
    He reached into his
pocket, dragged out a small flask, and flipped its top open. The
unmistakable scent of moonshine flooded the air between them. It was
nearly scentless to a human, but a tantalizing aphrodisiac to any
shapeshifter. "This different?"
    She glanced at the
flask and then back up at him, looking torn between nervousness and
excitement. "I don't know how much to drink."
    Lars pulled some money
out of his pocket and threw it on the counter. "Come on outside.
I'll show you."
    She followed him, and
he smelled the excitement on her, along with something more primal.
Desire—or at least, lust. She wanted him.
    The night was dark, but
a harsh light buzzed in the alley behind the bar. Lars took another
deep pull on his cigarette and eyed Claire. "Ready to try it?"
    "Yeah." Her
eyes on his hands, she fidgeted. "How fast does it work?"
    "It'll hit you
pretty much right away."
    She nodded. "How
much...?"
    "Here." He
twisted off the cover and filled the cap with the clear liquid. "You
should watch it down here, you know. Guy dumps a splash of this into
your drink, and you'll be fucking him in the alley before you know
what happened."
    Claire took the cap
from him and studied it for a moment before looking up at him, her
blue eyes flashing with a primal need he recognized all too easily.
"Maybe I'd fuck him in the alley anyway," she replied in a
soft voice, before tipping her head and draining the cap. "I'm
not going to shift, am I?"
    "No." Lars
took the cap back from her. "Something in the moonshine
suppresses it." He drank directly from the flask, taking more
than she had. "Feel it yet?"
    "I—Jesus Christ ."
She slapped her palms against the wall and moaned low in her throat.
"God, that's good."
    He closed his eyes as
the rush hit him, making every molecule in his body sing. He sucked
in a deep breath and sagged against the wall. Even the slight
pressure of the bricks through the weight of his clothes was like a
caress.
    Claire's hand knocked
into him. Her fingers curled around the sleeve of his jacket in a
desperate grip, and she whimpered.
    "Just stay up,"
he whispered, his words not making sense even to him. He was alive,
exhilarated. He wanted to hunt, to yip and howl at the moon, but his
body wouldn't obey. Wouldn't change, wouldn't pierce through that
wall of magic. "Just stay...up."
    Claire tried. She could
feel everything .
The world was alive with sensation, with passion ,
caught in the exhilarated place she always went as she shifted.
Instincts she'd repressed and ignored for years awoke, shuffling her
timid humanity aside as she was reminded that this was what she