Master Wolf

by Joanna Chambers

  Lindsay gave a sigh of frustration. “You’ve always insisted you didn’t want the bond. I admit it took me a long time to believe you, Drew, but I believe you now. And I can honestly say since that last time in Venice, I’ve done everything I can to try to break this bond I forced on you.” He paused. “You’re free now, Drew, just like you always wanted.”

  Drew stared at him, his chest heavy and aching. He felt angry and lost and as though he was grieving something, all at the same time.

  What he didn’t feel was free. Not remotely.

  “Can’t you see why I find it difficult to have you coming here like this?” Lindsay went on, exasperation and misery bleeding into his voice. “That it’s hard for me to have you showing concern towards me?”

  The realisation that Lindsay didn’t want Drew here was curiously hurtful and he found himself hitting back bitterly.

  “Why should it matter if I come?” he bit back. “If you’re right and there’s nothing between us anymore?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Drew!” Lindsay cried. “Stop being wilfully blind! There is not and there will never be nothing between us! Perhaps on your side—I accept that. But my feelings are unchanged. They began before I bit you, and I feel them still.” He rubbed his hand against his chest, as though trying to ease a pain there.

  Drew’s wolf scrabbled and whined desperately inside him. His heart was heavy and painful in his chest, and a hot, messy ball of grief was lodged in his throat.

  “You say I’m free,” he said thickly, “but I felt your will just a few minutes ago.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That push I feel from you sometimes. It’s your will exerting itself. When your wolf tries to compel me.”

  “Compel you?”—Lindsay stared at Drew in frustrated disbelief—“I have never compelled you! Not once.”

  Drew rose from the bed and approached Lindsay, careless of his nakedness.

  “Do you think I don’t know how it feels to have you forcing your will on me?” he said, watching Lindsay.

  Lindsay gave a bark of incredulous laughter. “I know you don’t! You haven’t the faintest idea, because I’ve never done it.”

  Drew frowned. “Yes you have,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t intend to—maybe you didn’t even know it was happening—but I can assure you, I have felt it.”

  Lindsay laughed, an ugly scoffing sound. “No, my love. You have not felt what it is to be compelled. If it had happened, we would both know. It is unmistakable.”

  “Do it then,” Drew said, squaring his shoulders. “Show me what’s so unmistakable.”

  Lindsay’s gaze slid away. “I can’t. I told you, the bond’s almost gone.”

  “Try,” Drew challenged. “I think your wolf managed to heal you a little overnight. Like I said, I felt something from you, just a few minutes ago.”

  Lindsay shook his head unhappily. “I promised I would never compel you.”

  “But I’m asking you to do it,” Drew replied.

  He wanted it now. Wanted to feel that familiar, unsettling push. Wanted to know that the troublesome emotions coursing through him had an explanation.

  Wanted to believe that when the bond was severed, those emotions would disappear.

  “You don’t know what you’re playing with,” Lindsay warned in a low voice.

  “Just do it,” Drew insisted. “Show me what it was like when you were compelled by Duncan.”

  Lindsay was shaking now, but he gave a sharp nod. “Fine,” he said. Then he took a deep breath and said in an entirely different tone of voice, “Kneel.”

  Drew didn’t have time to parse the meaning of the order before he was falling. His knees hit the floor so suddenly and so hard he gasped in surprise and pain. It was as though someone had swept his legs out from under him, his body reacting before his mind had even absorbed the command.

  “Now, crawl.” Lindsay added in that same flat, commanding tone. “To me.” Drew wanted to protest the order, but he was too busy grappling with the fact that he was already falling forward, his open hands slapping against the wooden floorboards as he assumed an all-fours position. And then he was shuffling forward, abject and low, without having consciously decided to move.

  It was a truly horrible sensation, his body moving without his own mind directing it. He could not, simply could not disobey.

  “Lindsay—” he croaked, a note of protest in his voice.

  Before he could say anything else, Lindsay gave him another order. “Do not speak. Not another word.”

  Immediately, the words he was about to utter seemed to dry up in his throat, and he was mute.

  Drew tried to talk, but only a gargle came out of his mouth, an awful, panicked animalistic sound. And still his obedient body inched forward in satisfaction of the order that he crawl to Lindsay.

  Moments later, he was at Lindsay’s feet.

  “Stop.”

  Drew stopped crawling. His heart was crashing in his chest and an awful clamouring fear filled him. This abject slavery was nothing like the subtle press of Lindsay’s true desires making themselves known to him, persuasive and influential. Drew lifted his head to gaze at his tormentor, trying to plead with his eyes for release.

  Lindsay stared down at him, his expression bleak. “At this point, Duncan might have done any one of ten thousand things to me,” he said softly. “He may have commanded me to suck his cock. Or he may have given me a knife and ordered me to cut myself for his entertainment, or perhaps stick my hand in the burning embers of the fire for the same reason. He may have fucked me or had one of his men fuck me—or all of them. Or he may have just beaten me or tormented me for a while with thoughts of what he might do next—he always liked to build the anticipation.”

  Drew watched him miserably, still on his hands and knees. He felt sick but could not respond. Not with Lindsay’s command to be quiet still between them

  “It went on for hour upon hour. Sometimes day upon day,” Lindsay said, almost dreamily. “When he grew bored, he would throw me in the dungeon again to rot, until the next time he wanted to be entertained. Sometimes he left the silver collar on me so I couldn’t shift to heal.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to set my own broken bones in the dark.”

  Drew felt physically sick. Not that he hadn’t already known that Lindsay had suffered terribly, but experiencing what compulsion really felt like gave him a new and horribly vivid perspective.

  Suddenly Lindsay seemed exhausted. Waving a hand in Drew’s direction, he said faintly, “I release you.”

  The sudden absence of that clamouring feeling was an intense relief. Drew felt as though he’d broken the surface of a pool after being underwater. Gasping, he took some stuttering breaths, before climbing slowly to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsay said then, and he sounded genuinely regretful. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Drew didn’t know what to say. He’d just been given a glimpse into a part of the universe he hadn’t truly understood until this moment, and he wasn’t sure whether to thank Lindsay or curse him.

  Even as weak as he was, with the merest trace of the bond’s power in his grasp, Lindsay had been able to compel Drew with a terrifying ease.

  Now, finally, Drew knew that Lindsay had been speaking the truth when he said he’d never compelled Drew before. The old familiar sense of a strong will nudging against his own desires was something entirely different, and very much less frightening, than what he’d just experienced.

  Perhaps those subtle nudges were something Lindsay had no conscious control over.

  Lindsay rubbed his hands wearily over his face, then met Drew’s gaze.

  “You should go,” he said. “If I can compel you like that after just two nights without the poultice, I need to dress my arm without delay. I can’t leave the Wolfsbane off any longer. If I am to be able to defy Duncan when he comes, the bond must be destroyed.”

  “Lindsay, please don’t—”


  “I have to,” Lindsay interrupted harshly. He turned away and crossed to the dressing table, pulling out the chair and sitting down. “I should never have allowed you to persuade me to leave it off in the first place. I was so very close to severing the bond. Once it is done, it will be done for good but these last two nights have set me back. I should probably increase the dose…”

  Drew’s wolf was howling inside him, inconsolable. But there was nothing—nothing—he could say to contradict Lindsay. After all, had he not spent the last few decades saying that this was what he wanted?

  Lindsay reached for the blue glass bottle that held the Wolfsbane. It was indeed the one Drew had thought it was last night. He didn’t open it, though. Just sat there, holding it.

  After a moment he said quietly, without looking at Drew, “It’s probably best if you stay away from now on. I realise it’s difficult to stop your wolf when it gets an idea in its head, but the full moon has passed now and you shouldn’t need to shift again for a while.”

  Drew swallowed against the lump in his throat. “If that’s what you want,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes,” Lindsay said bleakly. “That’s what I want.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The past, part 4 – 12 years earlier

  * * *

  Venice, September 1808

  * * *

  Drew frowned when he reached the address Francis had given him. There was a masquerade here? Tonight? The mansion house before him was subdued and sober. No guests milled outside.

  He approached the large and solid front door, pausing to straighten his mask—which covered his brows and nose, leaving his eyes and cheeks exposed—before he knocked.

  He had been sent here by Marguerite to fetch Lindsay and Wynne. Marguerite had been adamant that neither she nor Francis would be admitted to the house, for reasons she had not deigned to share, and so Drew must go. She had warned him that it was not the usual sort of masquerade one found in Venice, with dancing and flirtation and some sneaking around of married ladies and gentlemen with their paramours. This was likely to be far less polite.

  “They will probably be knee-deep in an orgy by the time you arrive,” she had said.

  Which of course meant that Drew had immediately pictured Lindsay indulging in all sorts of fleshy delights. And that had made his wolf snarl with jealousy and resentment. It was a ridiculous reaction, but then Drew’s wolf was a ridiculous—and possessive and jealous—creature.

  Right now, Drew felt overwound, tight with mingled anxiety and excitement. It had been a year and a half since he’d last seen Lindsay and this encounter was something he could not help but long for even as he dreaded it. He hated how weak he was when it came to Lindsay.

  Setting his shoulders, he raised his fist and rapped sharply upon the door.

  He heard the clatter of a peephole being opened, and a deep voice asked his name. Drew gave the one he’d been provided with by Francis, and the peephole slammed closed again, only for the door to swing open moments later, revealing two large men in a brightly lit atrium.

  “Lift your mask, please, sir,” one of them said, expressionless. The other stood silent beside him, watching as Drew removed his hat and slid up the mask to show his face fully. Despite having requested this, neither man seemed particularly interested in looking at him. They merely nodded permission for him to replace the mask and the more talkative of the two jerked his thumb at a door a few yards behind them.

  “Through that door, up the stairs.”

  Drew gave a short nod and moved past them.

  The door was stout and made of heavy wood. Once open, the telltale sounds of voices and laughter and the faint strains of music drifted down from upstairs.

  He began to climb.

  When he reached the top of the stairs it was to find a matching closed door, and when he opened that second door, he found himself in a long, narrow corridor. Though it was poorly lit, he could make out bodies further down the corridor and as he got closer, he saw it was a couple, getting amorous. The lady, who wore an elaborate, old-fashioned gown with wide panniers, a stiff bodice and acres of sea-green silk, was being pressed up against the wall by a Pantalone figure dressed in red with yellow Turkish slippers and a black cloak. The Pantalone’s features were disguised by a knobby black mask with a hooked nose, only his mouth and chin exposed. As Drew got closer, he saw that the lady was in fact a youth of uncommon and ambiguous beauty. The youth peeped over the Pantalone’s shoulder as Drew passed, and winked lewdly before turning his lush red mouth towards the Pantalone’s neck to—kiss or bite? Drew could not tell, but the groan the man gave was ripe with pleasure.

  The music was getting louder as Drew continued on his way. When he finally reached the end of the corridor and passed through a third and final door into a sizeable ballroom, the music swelled dramatically, enveloping Drew and tugging him forward.

  The ballroom was full of masqueraders. They were in a variety of states of dress and undress… and of sobriety and insobriety. Some were dancing, some were laughing and drinking, and some were getting very intimate. At the far end of the chamber, an eight-piece orchestra played a frantic gavotte while groups of dancers cavorted chaotically.

  As Drew moved forward, he caught the faintest thread of Lindsay’s scent. It teased at him, playful and alluring.

  He followed it.

  It led him to a shadowy corner on the other side of the room, where a group of masqueraders sprawled in a circle made up of various chairs and one longer sofa. They were hanging all over one another and laughing immoderately.

  Amongst them was Lindsay.

  He was dressed as Harlequin, his lean, muscular body displayed by the distinctive tight-fitting colourful suit. A black half-mask covered the upper half of his face and his long dark hair, which had clearly been neatly tied at his nape at the start of the evening, had come loose, half of it escaping its queue and brushing his shoulders.

  His red bicorn hat had been appropriated by the beautiful young man who was half-sitting, half-lying on him

  The lancing pain Drew felt at that sight of that young beauty on Lindsay’s lap was a physical agony in his chest. A stupid reaction. No reason to feel that way. And yet he found himself imagining hauling the boy off of Lindsay and straddling Lindsay’s strong, slim body. Forcing Lindsay to touch him, see him.

  Instead, he just stood there, watching.

  The boy was slight and pretty, perhaps in his early twenties, and dressed as Pierrot in baggy white trousers and tunic. His face was made up alabaster-white with rouged cheeks and black-rimmed eyes—and with Lindsay’s red Harlequin hat perched on his fair head, he was pert and alluring.

  It was hardly surprising that Lindsay was smiling at him so warmly, so indulgently.

  As for the boy, he gazed at Lindsay with an expression that was something between wide-eyed worship and pure lust.

  It was an expression Drew had seen before over the years. Lindsay was a siren, attracting others with ease and capable of provoking intense devotion. Despite Drew’s resentment of the maker bond, his gut still twisted to see Lindsay like this, bestowing his attention on someone else.

  When Lindsay lifted his gaze and their eyes finally met, Drew felt the familiar once-twice gut-punch of connection between them—first his own reaction and then, as Lindsay’s scent reached him, Lindsay’s reaction, almost as real to him as his own, the two threads of emotion weaving together in inextricable ways. Yearning tinged with bitterness, desire overlaid with resentment—Drew couldn’t have unpicked the tangled strands of emotion if he’d tried.

  Lindsay’s dark eyes were hard as obsidian behind his mask. Deliberately, keeping his eyes on Drew’s, he lowered his head and set his mouth on Pierrot’s. The boy met his kiss eagerly, head tipping back and arms winding round Lindsay’s neck. The red hat tumbled to the floor.

  The pain that knifed through Drew at that sight reminded him of the night of his turning. That moment when Duncan’s servant had run him throug
h with his sword. Not only the pain, but the shock of it. Shock at the deliberate destructiveness of it.

  Drew wanted to turn on his heel and stride away, but he forced himself to be silent, to watch. He knew it was ridiculous—and worse, hypocritical—to mind Lindsay kissing someone else when he had himself rejected Lindsay repeatedly. But there was something about this, the deliberate cruelty of it, that made him feel betrayed somehow.

  At length, Lindsay lifted his head. His mouth was damp and swollen, eyes glittering behind the mask. The boy made a noise of protest, reaching for Lindsay again, but Lindsay ignored him, instead feigning, for the benefit of his companions presumably, to have noticed Drew for the first time.

  “Well now,” he said, his voice slightly raised to address both his friends and Drew. “Who do we have here? Is it the Doctor?”

  The group paused in their conversations, all turning to observe Drew with mild interest, chuckling at Lindsay’s sarcastic words.

  There were seven of them, Drew noted, and now that he saw them properly, he realised that, like Lindsay, they were all dressed as commedia dell’arte characters. A dainty Columbine and a proud Signora vied for the attention of a Capitano on the sofa while a slavish Pulcinella knelt at the feet of a Scaramouche.

  And Drew had not been left out. He’d been cast as the black-garbed Doctor by Lindsay. A boring tedious buffoon of a character who spent his time keeping the lovers apart. Well, he was about to separate Lindsay and his Pierrot, so that seemed to fit.

  “Good evening, Harlequin,” he replied politely. He did not use Lindsay’s name, unsure what moniker Lindsay was going by with these people. Nor would he use Marguerite’s name, though Lindsay would know of whom he was speaking. “I’m sorry to interrupt you but our… mistress requests your presence.”

  Lindsay’s gaze did not flicker. “Very well, I will call upon her on my way home. Is that all, Doctor?”

  Drew said calmly, “I’m afraid she wants you now.”

  Lindsay was silent for a moment. Then, without taking his eyes off Drew, he tapped the Pierrot’s shoulder, signalling to the young man to make himself scarce. The boy shot Drew a look of pure dislike and slithered off Lindsay’s lap.