Free Mating Heat by Jenika Snow

MATING HEAT
     
    Jenika Snow
     
    Copyright © 2016
     
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    It was the heat that woke me, the fire moving through my veins, licking at my flesh, and every single organ in my body. I awoke with a gasp. Sweat covered my flesh, and my heart thundered behind my ribs.
    Mating heat.
    The fierce need that my kind—animal shifters—got when they were fertile.
    Mating heat.
    Those two words played through my head over and over again, and as a cramp settled in my belly I knew I wouldn’t survive this. Of course literally I would, but it would be painful unless I found a male to be with, a shifter from my community that would be willing to risk the possibility of knocking me up.
    Unless I found a male who wanted to have non-stop sex with me, without protection, I was in for a very long twenty-four hours.
    Even if I could find a shifter willing to ease my pain, fill me with his seed so I’d feel that relief, I only wanted specific males … two to be exact.
    Xavier and Chase.
    I closed my eyes as the image of them filled my head, and as their names played through my head.
    Xavier.
    Chase.
    A shiver moved through my body as I thought about how they could help me, how they could make me feel so damn good.
    But I’d known them nearly my whole life, and they’d never shown me much interest before. In fact, they’d always gone for the females that were the opposite of me in appearance and demeanor.
    Rumor had it they also had only been with their own shifter kind.
    I was a wolf shifter.
    They were bear shifters.
    My community might have numerous animal shifters living together in one area, but a lot of the males and females tended to gravitate toward their own kind, not out of discrimination or disgust, but just because it was their instinct drawing them to the same shifter subspecies.
    Another wave moved through me, and I gasped right before I moaned.
    Right now I felt good, hot and my body tight, but there was pleasure. As time went on that pleasure would turn to discomfort, and then severe pain if I didn’t find a male.
    Maybe I could run through the heat, just shift and make myself so exhausted I couldn’t even stand, let alone concentrate on the heat and arousal playing through every cell in my body.
    I breathed out roughly when the pleasure stilled and I could actually focus again.
    Although it was my first heat cycle, I was highly fertile. But I found a little relief in the knowledge that just because I was fertile didn’t mean I’d get pregnant with each mating heat.
    And thank God the heat only came once a year. I couldn’t even comprehend going through this every month.
    Males might be attracted to me because their inner animals wanted to mate with me, but their human side had a lot of say on how they proceeded.
    What male in their right mind would want to possibly be stuck with me because he’d gotten me pregnant?
    One that’s younger and hard up enough he doesn’t fully know what he’s getting into.
    At twenty-one my shifter body was ready to carry young, even if I personally wasn’t. But if I didn’t find some kind of relief the need and discomfort would only grow until I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t even breathe. The arousal would have a stranglehold on me.
    I could get through it, just as plenty of other females did who didn’t have a male to help them.
    As I stared at the ceiling I felt another wave move through me, and I moaned. My skin was so sensitive I could feel the very threads that made up the sheets I lay between. The heavy weight of my breasts ached something fierce, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if my nipples, as hard as they were, tore through the material. And then there was the junction between my thighs. My pussy throbbed, and my clit tingled. I was wet, so wet the sheets under me were starting to get damp.
    I shifted my legs, sawing them on the mattress. The sheets had been kicked off during my sleep, and my skin felt prickly, like I had a cactus rubbing