Free Beast Within by Betty Hanawa

token resistance, as though whoever was in charge wanted us
out of there. Everyone was suspicious as hell, but we were damn glad to be
out.”
    “Then you came back and were invalided out because of your
so-called blackouts?”
    “Hard to stay SF when I kept waking up with no idea how I
got places.”
    “I’m sure the naked raised a few eyebrows too.” Haley
grinned at him.
    One thing he loved already about Haley was that she was
wacky enough to find something funny in everything. Her joy in life eased the
shadows threatening him.
    “The stand-up cock didn’t help much either. I was actually
worried I’d get busted out for being a pervert.”
    “Poor Pickle.”
    Dylan bared his teeth at her. “Damn. If my teeth were
pointed right now, I’d rip your throat out.”
    Haley ran her hand down his chest. “I have an experiment I
want to try. I want to see if we can learn to control this changing bit.”
    Dylan’s blood heated at her touch. His cock jerked. “Oh,
yeah? Does it involve you getting naked and an exchange of body fluids, I
hope?”
    “However did you guess?”
    Dylan lunged at her, but she pushed him back against the
bed.
    “Let me explain first.”
    “Talk, talk, talk. Yap, yap, yap. Ever heard of ‘shut up and
kiss me’?”
    “Shut up and let me talk. I have a master’s in biology.”
    “Big whoop. My mom’s love of poetry led me to get a Ph.D. in
European Literature.” Dylan tunneled his hands under her pajama top. He got his
hands around her breasts, but she pulled herself away.
    “Oh, Doctor, I’m so not impressed. And this degree in which
you Piled Higher and Deeper qualifies you for what?”
    “To ascertain if a patron desires fries with the order.” He
reached for her again, but she slapped his hands.
    “Yeah, I thought so. Keep your hands to yourself, big boy,
before I get my handcuffs out. And I don’t mean the breakaway bondage ones.
I’ll knock you out and get my official ones around you.”
    Dylan tucked away his grin. She wore her Valkyrie game face
which clearly radiated do not mess with me, you will not win.
    Maybe if Dylan behaved himself for a bit longer while she
yakked away, she’d pull out the breakaways and let him use them on her. Being
the sub in bondage games wasn’t something he liked, especially after all the
crap he went through in Hell Hospital.
    “Listen to me. When you were eating, even a while ago when
we were having sex, you didn’t fully change into the jaguarondi. Do you have
any idea what you were thinking at the time?”
    “Sex?”
    “Get your mind off your pickle, pickle head! Think.”
    “Oh, hell. Okay, okay. Let me think. When I was eating the
steak, I wanted to get my face into it like a caveman. I didn’t want to
embarrass myself in front of you so I forced myself to use a fork.”
    “Okay, that’s a start. And when we started rolling around on
the bed?”
    Dylan felt like he had in sixth-grade when he tried to pick
up the eighth-grade head cheerleader. “Hell. I was afraid if I made an ass out
of myself by turning into a jaguarondi, I’d never get laid.”
    Haley patted the top of his head as if he was a little kid
who learned to tie his shoes.
    He grabbed her hand and pushed it onto his shaft. “It’s
called lap dancing for a reason.”
    She had the gall to laugh. “If this works like I think,
we’ll get to that.”
    To his pleasure, she didn’t remove her hand, even though she
didn’t massage his cock either. She just kept talking, “There is a part of the
brain called the amygdala.”
    “Wasn’t that the name of Luke Skywalker’s mother in the old
Star Wars movies?”
    “That was Queen Amidala. Shut up or I’ll twist your balls
until they turn blue.”
    “Yes, ma’am, Brunhilde.”
    “The amygdale decodes emotions, particularly those involving
things that threaten a person or animal. It reacts with the brain’s hippocampus
that stores and retrieves memories. The result of the two working together is
strong emotional