[ This appears to be a romance novel of some sort, titled "Instinct for Warmth," which features Cobalt and Thorn on the cover—Cobalt with some slight coeurl-esque features, pressing Thorn up against a winter cabin wall. ]
“Yeah, well.” Thorn sighed, leaning against the wall to stare out the window at the unbroken white of the storm. Man, of course—he should have seen this coming. Too much, too fast. “You don’t have to pretend for me.”
Cobalt was against him in a flash, hand hitting the wall next to Thorn’s head—and Thorn realized, startled, that there was something wild in Cobalt’s eyes that he’d never seen before. He looked strangely feverish, and—well, his tall, muscular body so close—
“Don’t say that,” Cobalt said, quietly. Almost tenderly, in a way incongruous with his posture. “Please. I’m being who I want to be—for you.”
“You—“
And Thorn reached up to grab him by the collar, frowning, before continuing. “That’s fucking stupid. Just be who you are, then. That’s who I want.”
There was a sound almost like a growl in the back of Cobalt’s throat, and then he was pushing him back against the wall to kiss him fiercely—
***
Thorn is anxious about bringing his relatively new boyfriend Cobalt home for the holidays to meet his family—he’s a private person, and he knows his family is going to be nosy about Cobalt’s life and how serious they are, and he doesn’t want to mess this up. And as they make the long drive through the snow, Cobalt seems like he might be having second thoughts—getting increasingly antsy and brusque in a way that seems out of character.
When the snow turns into a snowstorm, Thorn and Cobalt have to halt their drive and take shelter in a vacant cabin—and Cobalt’s sure this will be a disaster. After all, he forgot to consider the phases of the moon—because he’s been trying to keep the fact that he’s a shifter from Thorn. He doesn’t want to hurt him, but trapped together under a full moon, he can feel the transformation coming on—and can feel his careful control slipping away. The coeurl form wants to hunt, to catch, to dominate—and eventually, he’s going to have to give in to instinct.
Re: Cobalt