Tooth and Claw

by R. Lee Smith

  Nakaroth glanced at her as he poured a little wax onto a jut in the wall and set the candle in it. “Your thoughts?”

  “Here,” she said, digging into her pocket for her broken knife. She tossed it to him.

  Nakaroth caught it easily and looked at her, head cocked.

  “For your wall,” she said sourly. “That’s what I am, isn’t it? Another trophy.”

  He let out a low, rumbling sound that was not quite a laugh and put the knife down on the table. “I saw a fine prize when I first saw you, I admit. I like to hunt and I have always enjoyed those females who do not make an easy chase of it.”

  She glared, silently daring him to tell her how she ranked on his list of conquests.

  He didn’t. Smiling, not with victory but with a kind of rueful self-awareness, he came to stand close in front of her. Too close. He wasn’t trying to threaten her with his physical nearness, she knew that, but he loomed anyway, inescapable, inevitable. “Have I run you down, my mate?”

  “No.”

  “No,” he agreed, and touched a claw to the scarred back of her hand. “Never stop running. It is so much finer to run alongside you.”

  “Don’t get too carried away with that crap,” she warned. “I told you a thousand times, I’m not staying.”

  “I will not cage you.”

  “Yeah, right. I had a choice.” She gave the last word an extra twist, but then only stood and watched his claw trace the dots and dashes of her healed wounds. “And so did you.”

  “Mm.”

  “You had a choice, Nakaroth. You had Mika all but throwing herself at your feet. Why the hell did you pick me?”

  He flicked an ear dismissively, but she could see him thinking about it. “You were a fine prize,” he said again, without lechery. “I saw you there, a stranger in our world, challenging our lord with your tiny metal tooth and no fear. No fear. I thought…challenge will follow this one as surely as thunder follows the flash of stormlight. I will have her. I will—ha!—run her down. She will not be an easy chase and the meat of that kill will be fine, so fine. Fear, you see, sours the blood. There is nothing so sweet as that prey which knows no fear.”

  His hand moved, now covering hers, but not gripping. She could have easily pulled away. She didn’t.

  “But I came to know you,” he said, moving his hand up her arm and down again. Petting her. A caress, as performed by a man who had only ever heard of one in theory, but never put it into practice. “And in knowing you, I knew you were afraid. Very afraid. For your pack. For yourself. I knew the fears that came to you in dreams and those that scratched behind your waking eyes. I knew…because you told me. Only me. Do you know who I am?”

  Well, obviously that was a trick question, but no matter how Nona tried to look at it, she couldn’t figure out how. “You’re Nakaroth,” she said finally.

  “Yes. I am the son of a chief of Dark Water Pack and the second to the chief of High Pack. I was, I suppose, chief of the Aces Pack. Ha! I am a great hunter. I take trophies. I wear scars. I faced the Mad Bitch herself on the field of battle. I am strong. I am clever. I am fierce. I am—” He leaned back, putting just enough distance between them to display his powerful body for her. “—very desirable. But you…you saw none of these things. You saw Nakaroth.” His smile slipped, returned, then fell away. “You saw me. You shared your thoughts, your fears with me. You wanted…me.”

  “I didn’t want this.” Her voice cracked. She was afraid to try again, afraid to expose even more of what was already broken, and afraid of silence most of all. “I’m sorry. I’m being a…I’m so ungrateful. I can’t help that. I just can’t be what you want.”

  “I don’t want gratitude. I want a mate who sees me. Not that,” he said with a dismissive flick of his claws in the direction of his trophy wall. He brought her hand to his chest and pressed it over his heart. “This.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “It’s a beginning.”

  “The beginning of what? You don’t love me,” she said stubbornly. “Sex isn’t love.”

  “It will hold until stronger bonds are fashioned.”

  “I don’t love you. And I won’t try. I’m leaving in the spring.”

  “I won’t cage you,” he said again, and smiled that knowing smile. “But I will try to change your mind. I am very persistent.”

  Nona nodded, all her arguments expended. “So…You want to consummate this catastrophe or what?”

  She didn’t think she said it just to put him off, but she was uncomfortably surprised when he simply took her hand and led her to the bed. She took her shoes off when she got there, but left her jeans on; plucked at her sweater, but did not remove it.

  He made no demands, seemingly content to stand there all night, his hands loosely holdings hers, licking and nuzzling at her bare throat while he waited. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. She didn’t need seducing. This was the part she was ready for. It was everything else that sat like lead in her heart.

  “I shall have to make another mat,” he said as he eased her to her knees in the center of his small bed. “And we will have to sleep very close until I do.” He moved behind her, sweeping her hair to one side to continue his wolfish kisses as he pulled her back against him. “But tonight…I think tonight we will not sleep at all.”

  “Do you have to talk?” Nona asked and felt such a surge of self-disgust that for a moment, she thought she would physically puke, right here in his bed, right here in his arms. Wasn’t this bad enough? Why was she so determined to make it worse?

  He did not pull away or show the slightest hurt or anger, and he could have. He should have. He was doing her a favor and they both knew it. Instead, he held her closer and said the only right thing he could have said: nothing.

  She dropped her eyes, which got her away from his steady stare, but left her looking at the shadowed suggestion of his loins. “I’m sorry. I swear I’m not trying to be a…to be difficult,” she concluded, and glumly thought that was going to be the hardest part about all of this—stripping away the word ‘bitch’ as a curse-word after practically wearing it as a name-tag, if not a medal, for years. The lycan’s language didn’t even have anything to replace it.

  She’d have to be her, just her, all the rest of her life.

  ‘I’m leaving in the spring,’ she thought, but didn’t say it out loud this time.

  His ears moved, as if he heard it anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s not you. I know that, I swear I know that. I’m not mad at you, just…just don’t expect me to be happy right now.”

  “Now? No.” He stroked one hand over her hair, careful not to let his claws catch on the tangles. “But is it so impossible to think you could one day find something like happiness with me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it’s impossible. Nothing was ever more impossible. It sets the fucking bar for total fucking impossibility.”

  He moved to crouch in front of her, searching her eyes. “Is it truly so terrible to be my mate?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you! Nakaroth, I don’t belong here!”

  “Belonging is not a place. The lycan are no more born of this world than humans, yet it has taken us in. We have earned our belonging with blood and pain, and with joy, yes. We are home now. We are this world. Our voices sing through its ancient memories. Listen.” He leaned in and licked her, whispering, “Listen to the Endless. Hear your voice and mine, joined. Hear our cubs, singing to be born.”

  She laughed—a high, despairing sound and probably rude as hell, but damn it, that was just awful enough to be funny, the same way a well-timed ‘At least it isn’t raining,’ could still get a smile out of her in a bad movie. “I’ve got to hand it to you, I really didn’t think there was any way for this to get worse, but if there was, that would be it, all right.”

  “If there was?” he repeated. He did not sound confused.

  “We can’t have cubs,” she explained. “I’m h
uman. You’re—”

  “Lycan.”

  “Right. We’re too different.”

  “The lycan were not born on this world, I have said.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s basic biology.”

  “The lycan were not born on any world,” he broke in gently, stressing the word ‘born’ ever so slightly. “The lycan were made, one of many races created by magic for the amusement of wizards. And that magic endures.”

  Nona felt her crooked smile waver. “What?”

  “The humans of this land fear us. They even hunt us, from time to time. We dwell apart. The wolves who live alongside them are content with distance, ignorance. Such is peace in the mind of a wolf. So it was not until this last summer that our lord was told that it is proved our two kinds, however great our differences, can breed.”

  She stared.

  “But I am a wolf of Dark Water,” Nakaroth continued, holding her gaze. “We live…closer to our humans than those of other packs. I did not need to be told.”

  For a long, frozen time, she felt nothing. When she did speak, it came without forethought, without any kind of planning: “You son of a bitch. Was that what last night was about? Is that how you plan to ‘change my mind?’ You tell me you’re not going to cage me, but you know I’m not going back to Earth with your…your puppy!”

  “No, I did not plan it. But I let it happen when I knew cubs might come of it.”

  “And you didn’t think I might want to know that?”

  He cocked his head. “Did I think you might not already know that mating produces offspring?”

  “Oh, don’t even start! You know damn well you should have warned me!”

  “If you truly feared the consequence, you should have refused me.”

  “I didn’t think I had to! We’re not the same species, Nakaroth! We don’t have the same DNA!”

  “I do not know what that is.” He paused, shrugged. “But I know seeds grow where they are planted.”

  “Well, you’re not—” Nona shut her mouth, belatedly aware that her voice had been rising steadily and now she was shouting at him…while the entire pack waited outside, with no doors or even a curtain between them. She started over, in a whisper this time: “You’re not ‘planting’ any ever again. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I mean it!”

  “I take no pleasure in forcing my mates. If this is your will, I accept it.”

  She glared at him. He gazed back at her with an air of calm expectation.

  “No,” she said bitterly.

  His ears tipped forward.

  “No, I am not going to storm out of here. That is what you’re waiting for, isn’t it?”

  He smiled. “You still want me.”

  She laughed again, but even she wasn’t sure if she was laughing at him…or at herself. “I have my reasons for staying. But I am not getting pregnant. I’m going home. And if that means we’re not having sex again, then that’s what that means.”

  “I say I do not force my mates.” He gave her a meaningful look. “We are still mates, as I understand your will. We will share this cave, you and I. We will share this bed? Yes,” he said to her reluctant nod. “The nights are long and cold ones. I am warm, if I am nothing else. And this? Is this permitted?”

  As he spoke, he put his hand between her legs, stroking her through her clothes. These weren’t smooth, practiced, sensual touches. His palm ground at her. His fingers pushed and rubbed together, forcing a wedge of fabric against her and into her.

  “That’s a bad idea,” she said, closing her thighs (but around his hand, holding it against her, not pushing it away).

  “How so?” Nakaroth inquired, still rubbing. His eyes burned down into hers while his hand worked, seeming almost to glow as the scent of her body’s desires billowed out into the cavern. “We shall lie together in this small bed all winter. Your body and mine…on cold, cold nights. There is no harm, is there?”

  “I…guess not.”

  “Is that how you say yes?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do not guess,” he said with some severity. “Be certain. I pride myself not unduly, I think, at my skill with human speech, but you do not make yourself easily understood. Is my touch welcome on your body?”

  Damn him. He didn’t have to ask. He just wanted to hear her admit it.

  Her face burned, but it was nothing to compare with the heat flaring in response to his damned hand. “Yes,” she muttered.

  “Again.”

  “Yes,” she said, louder.

  “Yes,” he echoed complacently, and leaned in to lick at her neck while she pretended to squirm. “After all, no cub was ever shaped by a wolf’s hand alone.” He caught hold of her jeans and panties in one fist, pulling them away and down all the way off in a single sweep of his arm. He cupped her bare sex, his eyes locked on hers as he pushed one finger slowly inside her…and out…and in. “Or his tongue.”

  She flinched, even as her hips rolled against his hand. “What?”

  “His tongue,” he said again, so calmly. “Shall I lick you?”

  “W-What? Why?”

  “Because I want to. I saw you last night, the way you bit at your pleasure, to keep it secret. We are mated now. There are no secrets.” He leaned toward her, leaned low. She heard the rasp of his tongue on the front of her sweater, felt its little pressure like a brand through the threadbare fabric and then on her bare throat and up, all the way up, over her chin to her panting lips. “I want to hear you howl,” he breathed.

  “I…No!”

  “No?”

  “There are people out there!” she hissed.

  His teeth glinted in a grin. “I want them to hear you howl also.”

  “Well, I don’t! I need the whole damn pack knowing…knowing…”

  “How I fill your womb with fire?” he suggested, not-so-innocently.

  “You don’t.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She put an arm out, her hand trembling against his chest, but not pushing. His hand kept moving; she moved with it. When he leaned forward, she fell back. “No,” she said again, folding her legs around his waist…his sides…his shoulders. “No,” she groaned, grabbing at the furs of his bed when his tongue touched her, long slow passes along her outer folds, parting them, exploring. “No!”

  “You need to find another word,” he said, looking at her over the soft crest of her mound. “Or I really will stop. I do not force my mates.”

  She breathed, staring at the smooth stone ceiling of his cave.

  He breathed, hot against her throbbing sex.

  “Nakaroth,” she whispered.

  “Again.”

  “Nakaroth.”

  He glanced toward the open mouth of the cave, then at her. He waited.

  Something flared, some hot violent emotion burning up from her stomach to her face and down to coil and throb in her loins, but even she couldn’t say whether it was embarrassment or anger or just dumb animal lust. She understood what he was doing. She’d been pretty lackluster out in the clearing when she’d accepted his proposal; he wanted the whole pack to hear her enthusiasm when she reaffirmed her choice.

  “Nakaroth!” she shouted and glared.

  He made a low approving growl and lowered his head again. Inexperienced as she was, she knew he’d never done this before either, but what he lacked in skill, he more than made up for with confidence and perception. No response, however slight, escaped his notice. He did not give pleasure, he pursued it, tracked it, ran it down, and fed on it like prey. She could feel climax building, as stormclouds build—ominous and weightless, a darkening, a charge in the air.

  And then he stopped.

  “No no no no no,” poured out of her in a wail before she remembered. “Nakaroth,” she whispered, suddenly intensely aware of the doorless cave and all the lycan listening. “Nakaroth. Damn it, you can’t just stop! Nakaroth!”

  He laughed at her a
nd dropped onto the bed beside her, licking his muzzle. “You want to strike?” He nodded at her hand, already clenched and twisting at the bedding in frustration. “Strike.”

  “What, you want to watch?”

  “I want to learn.” When she didn’t move, he took her hand and pressed it between her legs, staring into her eyes as he shared her first tentative movements. “Yes…like that. Just so. Ah, this is strange! I have never seen my mate’s face in pleasure. I like it.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, closing her eyes, “but please stop talking. It’s hard enough to do this with an audience. I don’t think I can handle the commentary.”

  He chuckled but obeyed. With her eyes shut, it was that much easier to focus on feeling. His breath was distracting (not to mention the tickle of his fur all along her side), but not unwelcome. Awkwardness receded. Arousal returned. She began to lose awareness of exactly where her hand stopped and his began.

  “Look at me,” he said suddenly.

  Startled, she did. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged. The flexing of his arm put pressure on her hand in unexpected ways, a reminder this was not entirely her touch. “I want you to see me. I want you to know I am with you.” He scraped his teeth along her neck, licked the skin he’d scoured, and stared intently into her face. “And I like to see your eyes when I touch you. They are dancing with your pleasure, all their colors full of lights.”

  “It’s the candles,” she mumbled, turning her face away. “Your eyes are full of them, too. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  He cupped her cheek, made her look at him. “Are they? What else do you see in me, my mate?”

  “I see that you are really committed to making me talk about something that no one needs to talk about. I’m already here, aren’t I?” she said and laughed without much humor. “I’m already here with my pants off! Why do I have to talk about it? Can’t you just take your win? Do you have to rub it in my face?”

  He drew back slightly, frowning. “Is that what you think I am doing?”