Maybe he was just putting on a show for his friends and neighbors, but Clarke gave me a great tour of his home, introducing me to everyone we met, responding to their probing questions with such a quick mind that I struggled to remember all the lies he made up about me and left most of the talking to him. They were such friendly people – which was the biggest surprise of all. I knew that if they had known what I was, then that friendliness would have evaporated in a blank second, but I guess I had always imagined that Wolf Takers were just nasty people. Why else would they hate wolves the way they did? In my mind, they had been an insular community of po-faced, humorless, hate-filled inbreds, sharpening their axes and glaring at people who ‘weren’t from round here’. Instead, they couldn’t have been more open, more smiling or less threatening. I found myself genuinely regretting that I happened to be from the one genetic group they really did hate.
The one slight problem with my jaunt around Hobton was the dogs. Wolf Takers habitually kept dogs to compensate for their own inability to tell a wolf by sight alone. Back in the day, Wolf Taker dogs would have been trained to howl at the merest whiff of a wolf, and no doubt many of my ancestors owed their deaths to such animals. These days, fortunately, the dogs remained but were less highly trained. Most Wolf Takers barely saw a wolf in their lives – how could you train a dog to howl at the smell of something it never got to smell? But, although the dogs we saw – and Clarke did try to steer me away from them – did not howl when they scented me, they were clearly uncomfortable, whining and growling. They knew that I was not ‘right’. A few Wolf Takers remarked on the dogs’ behavior – ‘he’s not usually like this’ – but none made the connection, largely because I was there with Clarke, and that was as good as having a big, red ‘I’m human’ badge on my chest.
“Today was fun,” I remarked as I relaxed in a chair by the fire, back at the guys’ house, and Clarke brought me my dinner.
He shot me a look that suggested he disagreed.
“You didn’t have fun?”
“I don’t like lying to people. And certainly not to my friends.”
“Pity. You’re very good at it.”
“I’m sure you are, too.”
It was a knee-jerk insult – lying was bad so werewolves must be good at it – and despite my desire to make him like me, I wasn’t inclined to let this one pass. “No. Werewolves seldom lie. We’re straight down the line. For great liars you gotta go to humans.”
“We are terrible,” muttered Clarke.
“I didn’t say that,” and there was a sharpness to my tone now, “I just told you the truth. Which is what werewolves habitually do.”
“Among other things.”
I put down my fork with a loud rap. “Did you ever lose someone to a wolf attack?”
“What?”
“I’m being direct, it’s what werewolves do. Among other things.”
“Why would you…”
“Well, something’s up your ass about me. And that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. You are quite free to dislike me – lots of people do, that’s why I’m here. I’m just wondering why you do. I don’t think it’s because I’m a man-bitch – a term I wear as a badge of honor, by the way – I think it’s because I’m a wolf…”
“Do you want to say that louder? I don’t think they heard it in Thurlow.”
“Thurlow?”
“Next village over, it’s… It doesn’t matter.”
“You dislike me because of what I am,” I returned to my point. “I’m wondering if it’s because you lost someone to one of my kind. It does happen.”
Clarke nodded. “Yes, it does. Not to me. I suppose it would make more sense if it had. I sort of wish it had – I mean, obviously I don’t wish it had but… I wish I had something to explain…”
“Why you hate me,” I finished.
“I don’t hate you.”
“Seems like you do.”
“I…” Clarke searched for the right word. “Oh, fuck it, maybe I do hate you. But not you specifically.”
“All wolves.”
“I guess. I mean, you are incredibly irritating in lots of ways and, as the first wolf I’ve spent any real time with, you’re just a terrible ambassador for your species, but I wouldn’t say you’ve made me hate wolves more.”
“Dear diary…”
He laughed. I always felt a warm glow when I made him laugh, partly because it was a point of pride that I could do it, but also because it was a lovely sound.
“It’s tough growing up a Wolf Taker,” he said, finally.
“I guess it must be.”
“A lot of beliefs – especially about werewolves – you don’t get to develop for yourself. You are told what you believe. Colt used to question it all the time, till they thrashed it out of him.” Clarke shook his head. “For a long while there it was like he didn’t see the connection between saying that he’d like to meet a wolf to judge for himself and his getting the strap. Kinda dumb, I thought. But maybe it was brave to just keep plugging away.” He paused awhile. “I think there are some things – religion, politics, that sort of contentious stuff – that children should be taught about without any pressure to tell them what’s right and wrong. Then, when they’re old enough – say, twelve – they get to make the decision for themselves based on their own life experience. You want to be Buddhist? Fine. You want to be Catholic? Whatever floats your boat. Don’t believe in any of it? That’s okay, too, it’s not for everyone.”
“Sounds like a good system,” I nodded. “Like with food – you find out what you like.”
Clarke shrugged. “Actually, here, you eat what you’re told.” He flexed an arm. “Don’t get guns like this without a controlled diet.”
I tried not to stare. “Well… seems to have worked.”
“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Clarke gave a rueful smile. “It works. We tell kids what to eat, what to believe, how to act. And we beat them till they learn. And the excuse is; look at the results.” He indicated himself. “I may not be perfect, but I am what I’m meant to be.”
“Not that far off perfect.” I couldn’t stop myself and felt color flushing my cheeks.
“If you’d asked me last week,” Clarke went on, sensibly breezing past my words, “I’d have said I thought I’d turned out pretty damn well. And that, while I certainly hadn’t enjoyed all that indoctrination and getting the strap, it had made me the man I am and kids would appreciate that in time. I still can’t regret all of it – it gave me friends to last a lifetime. But since meeting you…” He shook his head. “You certainly haven’t turned me all around on wolves, but… You’re nothing like what I expected.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
Clarke threw up his hands. “Even I don’t know for sure. But it’s the way it is.”
We sat in silence awhile as we finished eating.
“I guess growing up in your family was no picnic either.”
“I really can’t complain,” I said. “I was pampered, spoiled, given whatever I wanted. After my mom died I was left to do whatever I felt like – which, I guess, is what every teen wants.”
“But not necessarily what they need?” suggested Clarke.
“I guess some boundaries might have been good,” I admitted. I’d had a fun adolescence, but I had been in such a hurry to be an adult that some of the key moments of growing up had been rushed. I guess I had imagined that when I was grown up, the loss of my mom would stop hurting. That had been wrong, though I did my best to bury it in excesses of booze, sex and whatever else I could throw at it. Which had been fun. I had enjoyed it. But had any of it made me more than fleetingly happy?
“Was One-Eyed Jack a good dad?” asked Clarke.
“He’s my Dad,” I said. “I have nothing to compare him to. He loves me. Some people don’t even get that. He may have given me a bit of a warped view of how relationships work. Are Wolf Taker women expected to do as they’re told?”
Clarke frowned. “As much as Wolf Taker men – we are all expected to do our duty.”
“I meant by their husbands or partners – in a relationship.”
Clarke laughed. “Not likely! We’re equal partners in relationships. That’s our way. We fight together and we work together. You can’t fight alongside someone as an equal if you expect them to do the laundry when you get home.”
Sounded right to me. “I guess, somewhere between your world and mine, there is a pretty good one.”
Clarke shrugged. “Nobody’s life is perfect. Maybe it’s the imperfections, the stuff you have to deal with, that make us who we are.”
“For better and worse.”
“Sure. But mostly for better, I think. The trick is not to let those moments just make their mark when you’re young, but to keep on learning through life.”
I nodded. That was good advice. It’s never too late to change, to learn a new point of view, to make an enemy a friend.
We talked a little while longer, the conversation turning to more easy topics before he headed upstairs to bed, and I lay down on the comfortable couch. I still wasn’t sure what Clarke thought of me, but as I lay down to sleep, it was my feelings for him that were upmost in my mind.
The sun was streaming in through the windows when I woke. I guess a city girl always sleeps late in the country, and I wasn’t a natural early riser anyway. There was a gravity driven shower in the washroom out back, fed from a tank on the roof. I guess my ancestors would have found it refreshingly cold, but to a girl used to hot water and power showers, it was like a form of torture until I got used to it. Honestly, when I got out, I did feel cleaner – like it had opened up all my pores.
“Clarke?” Back inside, I ventured up the stairs to the landing where I had not been yet. It seemed inconceivable to me that Clarke was not up and about yet and probably had been for hours.
Three doors led off the landing, leading to the bedrooms of the three guys. All three doors were closed. I stood staring at them for a moment. Obviously, going in would be a violation of their privacy, on the other hand, I couldn’t see any other way to look inside and I really wanted to look inside.
I opened the first door, feeling a little like Goldilocks. The room was tidy and Spartan but with a few pictures of family enlivening it. I had hoped to find something a bit more scandalous but wasn’t wholly surprised not to find it. My best guess was that this was Jackson’s room.
The next one was more of a mess; clothes scattered on the floor, several empty glasses littering the bedside table, blankets strewn across the bed. The only area of real neatness, where some pride had been taken, was the weight lifting set-up in the corner, with every weight in its proper place. Colt’s for sure.
That meant…
I knocked gently on the third door – something I probably should have done with the first two. “Clarke?”
No answer, so I went in. There was no sign of Clarke in the room. The bed was neatly made and there were bookshelves by the wall with a small but diverse looking selection from poetry to Sun Tzu’s Art of War. By the window was a small table with a chair pulled up underneath it. On the table was a dirty plate and I wondered why that would be there when everything else in the room was so pristine.
Because he had wanted to have breakfast but not wanted to wake me.
Suddenly, that dirty plate seemed like the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Usually, when men did not want to wake me in the morning it was because they were sneaking out and did not want to answer questions like ‘What was your name again?’.
I walked over to the table and, out through the window, saw a part of the village that Clarke had not bothered with in his hasty tour yesterday. It was an obstacle course, the largest I had ever seen – not that I had seen many – and clearly built here by the people themselves. Here was a wall of logs for the trainee to climb over, on the far side of which a deep ditch had been dug, half-filled with muddy water; there was a rope to climb, leading to a slim log bridge, at the far side of which a rope swing led onto the next obstacle. It looked pretty well impossible to me, but as I watched, I saw there was a figure going around it, running at an impressive speed. It was Clarke. He reached an upright log planted in the ground, probably cut from the same woodland that had provided the timbers for this house. Up he went, his arms and legs clasping the smooth wood. At one point, I saw him slip and saw the strain on his face as his muscles tightened beneath his dark skin, sheened in sweat. He flung himself upwards, one foot at a time, finally reaching the summit, his chest heaving with effort. He was shirtless and I could see every ripped muscle sharply delineated. He didn’t pause, but jumped to a rope ladder which he slid down, ignoring the rungs. Hitting the ground, he took off again at a sprint for the finish line, crossing it seconds later and checking his watch. He pulled a face that suggested he had done okay, but could do better. He bent double, trying to get his breath back.
I found myself unwillingly mesmerized. The slope of his back, glossy with sweat; the tight peach of his backside, outlined in the shorts he wore; the hard, corded muscles in the backs of his legs, stretched taut as he bent over. My mouth was dry as I stared. I knew I shouldn’t be watching, I knew that I shouldn’t be allowing these feelings of desire back into me, should not be contemplating the scenarios my brain was now starting to weave.
Clarke straightened up, picked up a towel which hung from a nearby tree, and headed off in the direction of the river. I was hurrying downstairs to follow him before my brain had registered where my feet were going. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to think. I was drawn to him by something more powerful than thought. Werewolves are animals, we answer to instinct, and every instinct in my body was driving me in one direction. I would have howled for him if I hadn’t thought it might draw attention to me.
Chapter 14
By the time I got near the river, Clarke had already stripped off his shorts and was bathing in the fresh, cool running water. I knew that the right thing to do – the respectful thing to do – at that point, would have been to announce my presence with a gentle cough or polite ‘good morning’; either that, or I should have gone away and returned when he was not naked. But the right thing to do and I have never been more than nodding acquaintances, at best. Clarke had his back to me and I crept cautiously towards him, careful not to step on any twigs, moving from tree to tree.
Finding a good vantage point, I allowed myself the wicked thrill of watching him in secret. Bending over – an action that made my heart thump in double-time – he scooped up water in cupped hands and poured it over his head. My heart was in my mouth as my eyes travelled with the water down his body, down the sinews of his neck, over his broad shoulders, down the expanse of his muscular back to trickle in rivulets over the pert, tight spheres of his ass cheeks and into the crevice between them. Presumably, the water continued downwards but I wasn’t going any further just yet. I was aware that I was being a terrible voyeur, and that if our places had been reversed, I might have been furious. But then again, werewolves have different ideas about nudity, it’s not a sexual thing to us, so no harm done.
That was a pretty flimsy justification. The idea that there was nothing sexual about the way I was staring at Clarke’s ass was obviously ridiculous, and any tenuous grasp I had on that belief was lost when he turned around. From every angle, Clarke was a beautiful specimen of maleness, every inch of him was solid masculinity. But my eyes were drawn to several particular inches, not solid yet, but unquestionably masculine.
Clarke’s head started up, as if at some sound, and I realized that sound was me walking forward, my feet once again making a decision in which my brain had had no say.
“What are you doing out here?” asked Clarke, apparently less concerned by his own nakedness than he was about me wandering about Hobton without permission.
I said nothing, but pulled the loose top I was wearing over my head, revealing my braless breasts, firm and proud before Clarke’s surp
rised eyes.
For a moment, it seemed to me that he might not accept this invitation. But in the next instant, the look in his eyes had shifted from surprise to desire, and his body was answering the heat in his gaze. In a few short moments, he was out of the river and up on the bank, taking me in his arms and kissing me. I responded with equal passion, hugging his hard, still wet body to me, and feeling the long length of his cock stirring against me.
Clarke’s hands slid down my bare back to rest on my hips, finding the waistband of the sweat pants I picked up after my shower. I wasn’t sure either of us was thinking straight, but I was sure we both wanted this. With gentle hands, Clarke drew my pants and underwear down my legs together, descending with them to kneel in front of me, his face close enough to feel the throbbing heat of my core. His breath tickled and tantalized the sensitive skin of my inner thighs as he stared at me.
For a few moments, we remained in that tableau as I relished the sharp anticipation of what was to come. I looked down to Clarke, and felt a quiet pride at the look of animal desire on his handsome features, his eyes glued to my core as if he had never seen anything he wanted more in his life. My hands had been hanging loosely at my sides to this point, but now I placed them on Clarke’s strong shoulders and trailed my fingertips across the warm, damp skin, up his neck to rest on his head, stroking across his scalp. I applied the lightest of pressures – more a suggestion than a demand.
Clarke seemed to waken from his stupor, though his eyes never moved, still hypnotized by the soft, crinkled lips, dewy with arousal, around which his whole world now seemed to revolve. He leaned forward and I mewed with keen arousal as his lips nestled against me, not intrusive or aggressive – not yet – just flirting with my sensitive entrance, orally caressing the hot center of my desire. His tongue stole out, flicking lightly, darting from point to point, leaving a dot of white-hot pleasure wherever it landed.
Her Forbidden Harem Page 10
