by Maria Vale
I catch the glint of his glowing eyes. There is no wild in him now, only anger. His jaw is so tight that I hear the joint grind.
John once described the way humans divided their stories into three types: Man against man. Man against nature. Man against himself.
It’s so alien to us. After all, we are nothing without our Pack, our land, and our other sacred selves. But listening to Ti, I am struck by the unspeakable, lonely againstness of humans.
It took years to chain his wild and will take patience to unchain it. I lie down on my side and start to change, and the world disappears except for the tumult of my body until I am aware of the cold ground against my naked skin. Ti must have gone back into the Boathouse while I was changing, because he stands near me with dry clothes and my boots. As soon as I finish tying the frayed laces with the DIY duct-tape aglets, I turn to him.
“If you won’t run with me,” I say, “then walk.”
“Where?”
“Through the trees, into the mountains. Somewhere. Doesn’t matter. But remember, I’m not like you. In skin, I’m barely better than a human. You will have to be my senses. You”—I lay my hand on his chest—“will have to be my wolf.”
I have no plan, just my own wolf telling me that if Ti feels the wild outside, really feels it, that may open a window for the wild that is dying day by day inside him.
We walk silently. Ti reads the world around us, and I read Ti. He sees the root stick up under the rock. He hears the snake through the leaf litter. He smells the algae that will make the newly exposed hardpan of a drying riverbed slick.
Two wolves running together are synchronous. Partly because we are attuned to each other, but mostly because we are attuned to the world in the same way. We both catch the scent of Pack, the sound of water, the sudden flash of prey, and our bodies move as one toward it.
This is different. My human senses are more likely to mislead me in the dark of the night woods, so I have to let Ti lead me.
He started holding my elbow, steering me like a wheelbarrow, which I really don’t like. I shook him off and slipped my hand lightly in his. With his skin against mine, I can feel the slightest tightening of his muscles, the change in his heart’s rhythms. When he breathes longer, scenting something, I can hear it. I read him so clearly: his pauses, his sparked attention, the caution or sureness of his steps.
We emerge from the woods at a granite promontory that looks over the stillness of our land. The dark stretch of balsam below smells like heaven. When the clouds shift, I see the thin waxing crescent that means I have twelve more days before I can no longer hold this form.
I feel Ti watching me, and I make the mistake of looking into gold-flecked black eyes, more beautiful than night.
I have never been so profoundly aware of someone in my life.
Chapter 15
Those eyes, the moon shimmer on his skin, the body I’ve watched so often from the corner of my eye and enjoyed so thoroughly in my waking dreams. It’s all right here, and I clutch tighter at myself, my breath hitched permanently in my lungs.
Then…he touches me, just pulls something from the hair near my face, but his fingers skim my cheek and I…
Run.
Ti leaps after me. Something sends me running crazy fast and just plain crazy, because I can’t see what I’m doing, so I trip over logs and slip into streams, and Ti—who does know where he’s going—is busy doing whatever he can to keep me from killing myself long enough to get to the Boathouse.
Throwing my clothes in the hamper, my boots into the corner, I blurt out a quick “Thanksforthewalkseeyoutomorrow,” but with one long step, Ti is at the door.
He holds my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound.” I try to sidestep him, but he won’t let go. When he touches my naked thigh, the lighter skin of his palm is stained dark. Stupid thing must have opened again during my headlong rush into disaster.
The muscles in my leg quiver against his hand, tensed and ready for escape. Maybe Ti feels it, because he doesn’t let go of my wrist as he heads to the kitchen for a damp, clean towel. He doesn’t let go as he leads me to the bed. He doesn’t let go as he dabs at the edges of the puncture. He doesn’t let go when he throws the towel to the side and leans over my thigh, his iron arms holding me down.
I feel the tentative sweep of the tip of his tongue on my skin. The strokes grow stronger and more insistent, cleaning away the blood. He sucks out a bit of branch or bark that hasn’t bled out.
“I have to leave,” I whisper, pulling away. “Now. Please.” My voice sounds high and panicky. He still doesn’t let go.
“You do know,” he says, “that I can smell you.” He breathes in deeply, and a little eddy of air runs against the damp skin at my thigh.
“And?” I choke out. “And what do I smell like?”
“You smell like clove,” he says and exhales in a long, warm sigh that I feel all the way to my womb. “You smell like sprouting earth. Like charcoal and moss. You, Quicksilver, smell like lust.”
Of course, he would know what desire smells like. Man like this must smell it all the time. I freeze, waiting for him to laugh like Ronan did at the pathetic longings of a crippled runt.
Ti doesn’t. He just slides up along my body, the soft, well-washed cotton suddenly feeling like thistles against my bare skin. He turns his head, exposing the spot between jaw and ear where scent is strong. “Now…what do I smell like?”
Like angelica and green corn and the air before a thunderstorm and rutting buck. My expanding lungs crowd my chest, sucking in more of the heady scent.
“So?” he asks.
“You smell really…really nice.”
“Nice?” He turns on his side, propping his head on one hand. With his other, he takes my fingers and slides them down his hard body to the long bulge at the front of his sweats.
“And is that nice, Silver?”
I jerk my hand away, that warmth in my womb almost agonizing.
He slides his hand under my breasts, lightly brushing the lower fullness.
“And is that nice?” he whispers, his hand sliding down over my belly where the skin is stretched far too tight.
As he moves further down, my back arches, and my knees bend until he reaches the silvery vee at my apex and slips his hand between my legs. I squeeze my thighs closed, pressing hard against his hand.
“And is this—” He slides one finger in and then stops, pulling his hand away.
“You’re a virgin?”
I freeze. My mind is a blank, and I’ve totally forgotten what Leonora said a virgin is. “That’s… Is that what humans call someone who’s not a viable mate?”
He scowls slightly. “Viable? What do you mean by ‘viable’?”
“Same as any Pack. Big. Strong. Fast. Whole. A fighter with good reflexes and a hunter with good strategy. You know. Viable.”
He turns on his back, silent for a moment, and then grabs the hem of his sweatshirt. He pulls it over his head and throws it toward the chair. It slides to the floor.
“The thing is, Silver, for better and worse, I am not Pack. I am a man. And god help me, but as a man, I really want to lay you down.”
Lay me down?
“And is that”—I clear my throat—“is that something humans do?”
“Humans do many things,” he says. “Shifters too. Why don’t you tell me what Pack do?”
“The female presents,” I whisper, “and the male covers. Everyone hopes for the best?”
“I see.” He moves in very close, so that something hard and cotton-covered just touches me. “And is that what you want?”
He’s so close that even though I can’t feel his skin, I feel his heat calling to me. I move closer, sliding my hand around his head, and touch his mouth with mine, but he shakes his head and pulls away, hi
s fingers gentle against my lips. And with that, I’ve failed at the only thing I thought I knew about human coupling. That it starts with the tasting of each other’s mouth.
Ti lifts my tightly fisted hand and unfurls my fingers. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Hands don’t really come into play in Pack couplings. I stare at our palms, mine small and rough against his large, smooth one. I slide my hand hesitantly against his until the inside of my wrist rests against the inside of his.
His skin here is silky as water but warm as blood, and I feel the lapping of his pulse. Like the sound of his heart when I lean my forehead against his chest. Like the subtle expand and contract of the ropy veins over the thick, sinewed muscle of his chest. Hesitantly, in case he doesn’t want my mouth anywhere on him, my tongue traces the long tear he plowed from his neck to his nipple. I run over the dark tip with my fang and then sheath it in the soft warmth of my lips. It tightens under my lips, and Ti weaves his fingers into my hair, gently pulling my head closer.
Some scrapings and tonguings and touchings make his sex jerk. Make dark sounds rumble through his chest. Make his own explorations of my naked body rougher and more urgent until every move abrades my nerves. Now, gliding over his tight muscles feels like a bruise. Now, the sweep of my hair against my hypersensitive skin feels like a lash.
The washed cotton of his pants chafes the inside of my thighs. It’s unfair. He should be naked like I am, with nothing to block my access to his body.
I slide my hands under his waistband and feel the taut, hard ass. The waistband catches on something.
“So free me, Wildfire.”
Running my hands slowly around the front, I feel the obstruction and free him. Like a conjurer doing the tablecloth trick, I pull away his sweats. With a sigh, they fall to the floor, and I kick them away.
I freeze, looking at his body. It is everything I could have wanted. Not smooth and civilized like I’ve seen in humans’ magazines. It is hard and fierce and wild and makes my soul ache.
“Your teeth are showing.”
Every desperate desire I’ve had to run from now forces its way out, and I want to touch everything. Everything from the high, taut arch to the curve of his calves to the carved line around his knee to the thick strength of his thighs. I push them apart and bury myself in the tight curls at the base of his sex, absorbing the smell of crumbling wood and musk, the loamy smell of old death and new life that is almost enough to send me over the precipice. I know enough to be gentle with the twinned weights below, tightening just enough so that the skin is taut and I can see the shapes underneath, and the skin is smooth under my tongue. I pull him into my mouth with a gentle scrape along my fangs, and his breath comes out in short gasps.
I move my hand to his sex, feeling the skin slide like silk over steel. Feeling the pulse of it now as I curl my hand around it. Tracing the vein with my tongue, swirling the thick—
“Stop,” he grunts. “Silver, stop.” He pulls me away. “Or I’m going to be finished before I’ve even started.”
“Started what?”
“I want this to be good for you, or you won’t want to do it again. And I…” He runs his hand slowly up from my hip, his fingers separating as he does. “Want to do it over.” When he reaches my breast, the soft swell feels almost painfully heavy. “And over.” His fingers drift and separate until they reach across my pale breast like a dark vine, my nipple trapped in the vee of his fingers.
“And over…”
He squeezes gently, and with one hot, rushed breath, my lungs cave in.
“Again.”
A boat bangs against the moorings and then floats out again, the rope taut and straining. He looks back down at me with those glowing eyes and bends low over my breast, each little pull with his lips sending a new shock along a separate path until my skin burns.
His fingers slide along one of those paths down my belly, across my womb, to the soft, straight silver hair at the join of my legs.
He circles his fingers through the soft strands, moving wider and farther, and when his hand cups between my legs, my thighs clutch at him, begging him to come into me. His finger scrapes lightly over the almost electric part of me and then slides easily inside.
This time, he stays, his finger like a tongue of fire, sweeping against places inside me and making them burn. And when he pulls out, I hiss. He uses that same finger to circle my nipple. In that cool damp, it tightens even harder. He follows the path with his tongue, skirting around the sensitive tip until my breast and body ache for his mouth, and he finally laps at it and his tongue feels like cool suede against the searing heat.
The air is saturated with clove and moss and green corn and rutting buck. It’s a fog of combined lust, and I can hardly breathe. His thigh shoves my legs apart, and I shake my hair out of the way, stretching my head to the side, so he’ll anchor me with his teeth. Hold me tight for that first tearing blow.
Instead, he nuzzles against me with the tight beard on his cheek. His hips move slowly, and with each pass, he intrudes a little farther in toward my core. His muscles quiver, straining to hold back.
“Are you ready, Wildfire?”
I’m just barely holding on to my veneer and growl in response. And when his hips make their next teasing pass, I grab the cord of his neck in my strong jaws and anchor him. My legs reach around his hips, and I pull up, impaling myself on the full length between my thighs.
Ti sucks in a sudden breath, his lips curling back from his clenched teeth, and in that one second, I see strong, white canines that are too long, too sharp, and too feral ever to be mistaken for human.
He releases that breath and shifts slowly until he is buried bone deep inside me, then he starts to move for real. Each thrust in brings diminishing pain. Each drag out brings growing pleasure. As it builds, muscles I didn’t know I had set up their own rhythm, pulling at him, and he sweeps against the mouth of my womb. With every plunge, his chest brushes against mine, and then he bends his finger against my entrance to my sex, so that with each pass, I feel the press of him inside me and out. I chase that feeling like it is prey, moving faster and faster until finally, with one last crash of blood and adrenaline, I catch it. My back arches tight, my deep snarl vibrates loud against Ti’s chest, and I immolate.
Ti grabs my thighs hard and thrusts into me one, two, three more times, and then stops, the beat of his life pulsing into me thick and steady, like the first blood of a felled hart, his body jerking hard, like the hart’s final throes.
In the end, death and sex look the same.
He collapses, panting into my hair, his hand pressed firmly on my belly, feeling the throbs of my body as it continues to clench hard around him.
He stays inside me for a long time, but when he finally pulls out, I feel shattered. If it weren’t for Ti’s heavy body weighing me down, I think any passing breeze could just pick up my pulverized remains and blow me away.
I lay my head on his shoulder, one of his scars under my cheek. I press each finger of my hand to the lines radiating from his neck. He tenses but doesn’t move.
“Tiberius?”
“Quicksilver?”
“What I did to you before? When I put my teeth on your throat? Did it hurt?”
“No,” he says after a moment’s hesitation. “No, it didn’t.”
“You know we can’t always talk, but it doesn’t mean we don’t communicate. What I did means ‘trust me.’ It means ‘I see you at your most vulnerable, and I will not hurt you.’”
He turns toward me, his eyes glowing the way they do, and covers my hand with his big one, pressing it tighter over the ravages of his throat. I smile softly at him, just the tips of my canines poking out. I see his tongue run over the points of his own, but he keeps them hidden behind his tightly closed lips.
I lay my head back down on his shoulder.
I make sure Ti is asl
eep before I creep out naked toward the trees. I tried, I really did. But I can’t sleep like Ti does, with his vulnerable underside exposed. I can’t sleep on my stomach, because I sink into the soft mattress like a boulder in a bog and can’t breathe.
The blankets weigh on me like chain mail.
I really am a crappy human.
Chapter 16
Because some persnickety wolves complained, Tara sent us to the Bathhouse to sweat out the tiny lingering scents from the junkyard.
Ti couldn’t be happier, stretched out on the top bench of the sauna where the heat is most concentrated. He exhales slowly, an almost noiseless sigh of contentment. He stretches out his hand, feeling for me, but I’ve crept down to the floor, a dampened washcloth over my face. I don’t care what Tara says; I’m not going to last more than five minutes. Offlanders use the sauna most. All that time spent with clothes and HVAC have left them in need of frequent defrosting.
Four minutes later, I race for the door and the icy waters of Home Pond, and when I return, a new pair of shoes is lined up beside the Bathhouse door. A quick sniff identifies them as belonging Caitlin, the 8th’s Beta. Solid flank strength. A real endurance runner.
I knock gently on the door.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Ti yells. “Just come in.”
At first, all I see through the crack in the door is Ti, pressed into the corner of the upper bench, his hands folded tightly atop a towel draped across his lap. Another towel is wrapped around his neck. He stares resolutely at the bucket of steaming river rocks. Caitlin is a foot to his right, resting on her knees and elbows, her ass in the air, presenting.
“Hey, Silver.”
“Hey, Caitlin. Been here long?”
