Let the Rain Come Down [The Moonlight Breed 6] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) by Gabrielle Evans (tools of titans ebook .txt) 📕

A high-pitched whistle rent through the night, and Oscar peered over his shoulder to see Xander marching toward them, flanked by two leopards and a wolf. “Let’s go, pup!”

“Hell yeah!” Grabbing Zavion by the wrist, Zuriel dragged him out onto the porch, and the brothers quickly stripped before darting out into the snow, shifting as they went. Seeing a furry white tail on a very human ass was probably the most comical thing Oscar had witnessed in a long time.

“Don’t come home all muddy!” Braxton called as he waved to his mate from the doorway.

“And don’t kill anything cute,” Keeton added, appearing beside his friend. “No eating bunnies!”

“They’re going to eat bunnies?” Oscar’s hand went to his mouth, and he turned to glare at his friends’ backs.

“No,” Keeton argued adamantly. “Didn’t you hear me? I said to not eat bunnies.”

Demitrius huffed and pushed Oscar toward the doorway. “They’re totally going to eat bunnies. Get over it.”

Well, his big mate was just a ball of sunshine, now wasn’t he? “You don’t have to be so crass.”

Shrugging casually, Demitrius gave him another nudge and jerked his head in the direction of the hallway. “Go shift. I’ll get your surprise ready.”

Resisting the urge to squeal, Oscar hurried to his room, stripping out of his clothes and leaving them scattered all down the hall. Making a detour into the bathroom, he scrubbed his face clean, pushed his boxers down his hips, and jumped up on the counter.

It was kind of silly, but he’d always wanted to see what he looked like as he transformed from man to animal. Standing tall, he stared at himself in the mirror as he stopped fighting the change and allowed himself to shift. It was very odd watching his body shrink and reform. His scalp kind of sucked his hair back into his head, and spines exploded all over the rest of his body.

When his metamorphosis was complete, he had to laugh inside his head at the picture he made—a tiny pygmy hedgehog, standing up on his hind legs and reaching his front paws toward the sky. He was actually pretty damn adorable, if he did say so himself.

He was also stuck. In his excitement, he’d neglected to plan an escape route and had no way of getting down from the high counter. “Demitrius, I’m stuck.”

“What did you do now?”

Well, that wasn’t fair. Demitrius made it sound like he got into these types of situations every day. Just because his mate had needed to save him twice from the snow in one day didn’t mean he was a klutz. He was just…gracefully impaired. “Can you just come help me?”

“Where are you?” There was a chuckle in Demitrius’s voice, and Oscar just knew he was never going to live this down.

“In the bathroom.”

“Do I want to know?”

“I wanted to see myself shift in the mirror. I’m stuck on the counter. Come help me and stop being an ass.”

Footsteps sounded in the hallways, and the bathroom door opened to his lover’s smiling face. “You are trouble.”

“Can I have my surprise now?”

Still laughing, Demitrius scooped him up and settled him onto one broad shoulder. “Remember how you said you wanted to learn to paint?”

Yes, he remembered, but Oscar didn’t understand how he was supposed to paint like this. He didn’t even have opposable thumbs, for pity’s sake. Instead of questioning it, however, he curled close to his mate’s neck and nibbled at his ear affectionately.

“Stop that.” Demitrius reached up and tapped him on top of the head with one finger. “It tickles.”

He did as asked but had another idea right away. Burrowing into Demitrius’s long locks, he scrambled up the man’s hair like a cat climbing a curtain and perched on top of his head. “Wow, you’re really tall. I can see Canada from here.”

“You cannot.” Huffing indignantly, Demitrius reached up to retrieve him, but Oscar was quicker, dodging his mate’s hand and scurrying down his neck to crawl inside the neckline of his shirt. “Oscar!”

Poking only his head out, he looked up at his lover and blinked innocently. “Yes?”

“You’re lucky you’re cute.” Stepping into the common room, Demitrius arched an eyebrow and scratched behind Oscar’s furry ear. “Are you going to stay in there all night?”

Warm, safe, and close to his lover had a certain appeal, but the curiosity about his surprise got the better of him. So, when Demitrius eased down on the sofa, Oscar ducked back into the guy’s shirt and ran down his chiseled torso, across his thigh, and finally slid down his denim-clad shin to the floor.

“Okay, gimme.”

* * * *

Careful not to squash his mate, Demitrius rose from the cushions and sauntered over to the open space on the floor near the fireplace. Oscar scuttled across the carpet, his short legs moving rapidly as he hurried to keep up. Demitrius wasn’t really the rainbows-and-butterflies sort, but even he had to admit that the guy was damn adorable.

Settling down on the hearth, he pointed to the large sheet of white paper he’d spread across the floor. The sheet crinkled under Oscar’s paws as he walked across it to investigate. Stopping in the middle, he sat down on his butt, looked up at Demitrius, and tilted his head to the side.

“I don’t get it.”

Instead of answering verbally, Demitrius reached behind the chair to his left, moving large, shallow bowls of paint and lining them up side by side on the edge of the paper.

Oscar looked from the paint to the paper and back several times. “I still don’t get it.”

“Come here.” Lifting the hedgehog around the midsection, he dipped his feet into the blue paint and then sat him back on the paper. “Go for it.”

The shifter didn’t look like he much cared for the sticky goop on his paws, but once he saw the prints on the white sheet, he let out the cutest squeak of excitement. Oscar ran to one