Code of the Wolf

by Susan Krinard

  But something held her back, and it seemed as if she stepped back from the edge when he slid his fingers deeper into her cleft and downward. Then they found her entrance, and she began to fall. There were no wings to save her; the abyss was there again, bottomless and black.

  “Serenity.” Jacob’s rough cheek pressed against hers, a simple, affectionate touch that brought her back to herself again. “What’s wrong?”

  She opened her eyes. The sky was full of stars, splashed across the darkness like spatters of paint. There was no cavern here, no chains or ropes to bind, no mocking voices.

  Only Jacob, who simply held her in his arms, lying beside her so that she could no longer feel the weight of his shaft on her thigh.

  She turned toward him, resting her forehead against his. “I…I only need a little time,” she whispered.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “No. No.” She smiled and kissed him, the barest touch of her lips on his. “I’m just not used…” She swallowed. “It’s been a long time.”

  It occurred to her then that he might think—correctly, even if for the wrong reason—that she was not a virgin. A woman alone, without a man, and still young… He might think she had been with Levi before their marriage, but if he did, he had never shown in any way that it bothered him.

  They had come to this without obligations or promises on either side. He knew he was getting her out of wedlock, with no real knowledge of what her life had been like since her family’s deaths. He would have no right to judge.

  But that was the wonderful thing. He wasn’t judging her at all. He was cupping her face in his big palm and stroking the tears away with his thumb, so very, very tenderly.

  “We can stop now,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  She covered his hand, trapping it against her cheek. “I don’t want to stop,” she said. “I want to give you—”

  “You don’t need to give me anything,” he interrupted huskily. “If this is all we ever do, it won’t make any difference.”

  But it would. To her. She wanted Jacob, wanted to be one with him completely. She turned on her side, rolling her body against his, and hooked her right leg over his left thigh.

  “I want you inside me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “You sure?” he asked, stroking her hair away from her forehead.

  She let her body speak for her, snuggling even closer, making it impossible not to feel his very hard erection and the quickness of his breath on her face.

  But he didn’t take her then, as he could so easily have done with a little adjustment and a single deep thrust. Instead he gently pushed her onto her back again, then began to work his way down her body with his lips and tongue, beginning with her lips and ending at the mound of curls he had so intimately touched before. He didn’t stop there but dipped his tongue where his fingers had gone, sliding it between the swollen folds of those other lips. He stroked downward, almost teasing her entrance, and then licked up again, flicking the nub, his mouth hot and wet.

  The wings of ecstasy began to unfurl from Serenity’s shoulders. Jacob drew the fleshy nub into his mouth just as he had her nipples, and suckled. Her heart nearly burst with indescribable pleasure. Liquid gushed from between her legs, and she was almost embarrassed. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. But Jacob lapped the wetness up as if it were honey and stroked lower once more, his tongue circling around and around the place that now felt so empty, so desperately in need of filling.

  Jacob filled it with his tongue. He pushed inside her. Serenity cried out and arched her back, stretching her legs farther apart. He withdrew his tongue and pushed it in again, mimicking what would inevitably come later.

  Still, it was not what she wanted. Once again she reached between them, tugging on his thick, dark hair, forcing him to slide back up along her body.

  His mouth was wet with her juices, and he slowly licked his lips.

  “I love the taste of you,” he murmured.

  Serenity shuddered. Even the few words he spoke drove her near to madness. But she kept enough presence of mind to reach down between them again, feeling for the shaft trapped between his stomach and hers. She brushed the silky head with her fingertips.

  Jacob stiffened. Serenity closed her hand around him, and moved it up and down, very gently.

  He closed his eyes and moved against her palm.

  “Serenity,” he rumbled, “you can’t keep this up if you want me to…to…”

  Nothing would have pleased Serenity more than to continue, seeing all the control slip from Jacob’s body. But she spread her thighs again and firmly guided him down until he was poised at her entrance, just one easy move away from filling her up completely.

  He hesitated only a moment, then thrust inside her. There was nothing hard or brutal about it; he seemed to glide in, moving easily over the slick surface her body had made for him. There was no pain, no discomfort of any kind, only a profound sense of rightness. This was how it was supposed to be, the way she had never imagined it could be.

  Love made all the difference.

  Jacob rested once he was fully within her, bending his face to hers. His unspoken question hung between them. He had seen how skittish she was at every touch—until tonight. How many times, she thought, had he wondered why?

  After tonight, he wouldn’t have to wonder any longer. For now, she could only reassure him with her fingers in his hair, her smile, her eyes. And her lips claiming his.

  Slowly he began to move again. He withdrew almost all the way, teasing her, then moved in again. He set up a rhythm that seemed to stroke Serenity inside the way his hands had stroked her skin, creating a delightful friction that made her catch her breath. His thickness stretched her, but again there was no discomfort. She lifted her hips to take him even deeper, and he obliged, cradling her bottom with one hand and driving all the way to the hilt.

  Serenity gasped, and once again Jacob hesitated. She locked her thighs around his waist.

  “Don’t stop,” she moaned.

  He began to move faster, no longer measuring his strokes the way he’d done before. She moved with him, eagerly, breathlessly. She spread her enormous wings and looked down into the chasm.

  Light exploded up from the depths, enfolding her, carrying her out into the currents that swirled with a million colors. Then she was flying as the light pulsed and throbbed around her, sending velvety shivers over the surface of her skin and deep inside.

  Jacob sighed and relaxed, holding himself up on his elbows above her. He kissed the side of her jaw and her ear, and nuzzled her hair. Serenity closed her eyes and settled back onto the precipice. The abyss no longer held any terror for her. She knew she could always find her way out again simply by spreading her wings.

  Rolling onto his side, Jacob murmured something she couldn’t quite hear, pulled her against him and hooked his arm around her shoulders. She tucked her head under his chin. A little while later Jacob’s breathing slowed, and she knew he was asleep.

  Her heart was overflowing, spilling joy throughout her body and keeping her wide-awake. She listened to Jacob for a while, then watched the stars and wondered how there could be so many miracles in the world that she had never noticed.

  That was part of the wolf, too, Jacob had told her. Now she was beginning to understand. And though Jacob’s goodness could never erase the evil of the Reniers and others like them, it had showed her that she had learned to hate a phantom that didn’t exist. Just as she had learned that there could be deep, abiding pleasure in the joining of woman and man. It was the greatest of gifts except one.

  And if she never received the other, she would be forever grateful to Jacob for giving her wings.

  SERENITY’S QUIET WEEPING woke Jacob from a sleep crowded with dreams of brilliant color and soaring wings. He was up at once, on the verge of panic before he saw her kneeling in the grass a dozen yards away, her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

  He ran t
o her, moving as loudly as he could to warn her of his approach.

  She looked up, composed her expression and surreptitiously wiped the tears from her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, attempting a smile. “I didn’t mean to wake you, but I should have realized you would hear me.”

  He sat beside her, began to put his arm around her shoulders and then thought better of it. She’d never liked looking weak, especially when she was at her most vulnerable.

  “I don’t usually sleep past dawn,” he said, resting his elbows over his updrawn knees. “Did you get any rest?”

  “As much as you’d let me.” She grinned, but he knew it was only for his sake.

  “Did I make you cry?” he asked softly.

  “No! Don’t think… It wasn’t you. At least not in the way—” She broke off, her breath shuddering out in a rush.

  He touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers. “You sure I didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. No. Please believe me.” She smiled at him again, warm enough to make him wish they had the night to share all over again. “I was only happy.”

  “You were crying because you were happy?”

  She lowered her head, her hair falling around her face so that he could no longer see it. “Women do that sometimes,” she said. “Maybe you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  A bird sang tentatively in the bushes nearby. Jacob smelled rain, maybe only a few minutes away. Down near the river, metal jingled. Jacob had heard the women coming with the horses and stop a discreet distance farther down the bank, but he hadn’t wanted to wake Serenity.

  Right now she was struggling with something—a secret, maybe—she wasn’t sure she should tell him. If she chose to keep it from him, he wouldn’t press her; he didn’t have a right to ask anything more of her when they would be parting so soon.

  Parting. Never to see her again. Never to kiss her, hold her in his arms, feel her thighs gripping his waist as he took her again and again to joyous completion.

  “I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way,” she said. “To feel so good, so safe. It was like a miracle.”

  Jacob felt humbled, but he sensed it would be better not to interrupt her with clumsy words of thanks he didn’t know how to give.

  After a moment she continued, speaking as hesitantly as if she were feeling her way through some vast darkness.

  “You must have realized that I wasn’t a virgin,” she said.

  He’d known as soon as he entered her, but after that he hadn’t been doing much thinking about anything. It hadn’t shocked him then and it didn’t now, but it meant something that she was telling him this. Something important.

  “Before tonight,” she whispered, “the only thing I knew about lying with a man was ugliness. Pain and humiliation.”

  Every muscle in Jacob’s body tightened. He’d wondered more than once if a man had hurt her, but she’d absolved her late fiance with her loving words and never hinted at anyone else in her life.

  “Who was it?” he demanded.

  She turned her head swiftly, her hair swinging away in a silken arc, and looked into Jacob’s eyes. “Does it matter to you that I wasn’t…wasn’t pure?”

  In answer, he put both arms around her and pulled her against his side, pressing his face into her hair. “I wasn’t exactly pure, either,” he said.

  Her laugh was more of a hiccup than anything else. “It’s different for men. Didn’t you know that? Not many men would think—”

  “I don’t give a damn about what other men think.”

  Tucking her head under his chin, she curled against him as if she wished she could fold herself into his body and disappear. “I’m glad,” she whispered.

  Jacob wasn’t sure he could ever be happy about anything again. “Who was it, Serenity?”

  She twisted in his arms to touch his cheek. “Is it so important, Jacob? I’m not who I was before you came to Avalon. The past is dead for me now. Last night took away all the rest of the pain.”

  Serenity took his clenched fist and kissed his knuckles. “Can you be content with knowing that you have changed everything for me?”

  Could he? Could he stop himself from imagining what she’d gone through, what pain she must have suffered to have completely cut herself off from male companionship?

  Zora’s words in Bethel came back to him then. She has felt nothing but hate for any man since I met her. Since you came, she is different.

  He’d been more than willing to accept her renunciation of her revenge against the Reniers, just as he’d renounced his own. Letting his anger keep the past alive would do nothing to change it. The Code had taught him that.

  How much do you care for her? How much?

  Enough to want to make her tormentor suffer. But not at any price. “Jacob?”

  Her voice was very soft now, hardly a breath of air grazing his chin. “I said I’d never ask anything of you again, but…”

  He knew then that nothing she asked him would be too much. “What is it, Serenity?” he asked, pulling her close again.

  “Will you…will you at least consider coming back to Avalon?”

  Only a few hours ago he would have flinched at the question. It didn’t seem so terrible now. Not after last night. Not after what she’d told him. She’d said he’d changed her life.

  But he’d changed Ruth’s life, too. He’d cut it short with his stupidity and neglect. Serenity had to know that, even if he never told her who had shot Ruth eight times and left her lying on the kitchen floor.

  “There’s something you have to know,” he said. “I was married once. Her name was Ruth, and I loved her.” He had to swallow twice before he could continue. “She was killed. Murdered, like your parents.”

  He told her the rest, about how he’d spent so much of his time away with the Rangers, coming home for only a few weeks out of the year, taking her for granted in spite of her devotion and selfless love for him, or maybe because of it.

  He didn’t tell Serenity who had murdered Ruth. He couldn’t ask her to share that burden now.

  “I should have been there,” he said, staring into a darkness that no wolf’s eyes could penetrate. “Ruth’s dead because of me.”

  “Oh, no.” Serenity dragged his head down to hers and wrapped her arms around his neck, rocking him like a motherless child. “No, it wasn’t your fault.”

  No one in the world could have told him that and made him believe it. No one but Serenity. Something happened to his eyes, something that spilled into his chest and dissolved the shame he’d carried with him ever since he’d found Ruth’s broken body.

  “It’s all right,” Serenity whispered, stroking his hair. “It’s all right to cry.”

  The rain began to fall then, small, cool drops that blossomed into warmth as they touched Jacob’s head and shoulders. He covered Serenity with his own body, lifted her into his arms and carried her into the shelter of the nest he had made for her the night before, easing her to the ground and lying down beside her.

  They listened to the summer rain, accepting the gentle gift of moisture that nourished cattle and crops, bad and good men alike. Jacob closed his eyes and breathed in the new life coming. The new life he could have if he would only reach out and take it.

  If he let the Reniers go and gave up the Code forever. Let them continue their depredations on behalf of powerful men who didn’t want to get their own hands dirty, even after he’d finally decided he couldn’t let that happen any longer.

  You don’t have to take them yourself. But who else would? Other humans? The very reason men like the outlaw Reniers were still running loose was because they weren’t human.

  Serenity’s warm, slender hand came to rest over his. “About what I said before…” she said softly. “You don’t have to decide now. We can stay here for a few days. Do whatever you must to be sure of what you want.”

  Did he finally know what he wanted? Was peace— a final, lasting peace for
him and Serenity—within his grasp?

  The damp grass rustled as Serenity got to her feet. “The rain has stopped,” she said. “Caridad and the others must have set up camp by now. I’m going to dress and walk a little before I go down to see them. I won’t stray far.”

  Jacob was slow to rise himself. He waited until he heard Serenity finish dressing and walk away, then examined his ruined trousers. They were stiff and stained, almost unwearable, but his spares were in his saddlebags down by the river, so he put on what clothes he had and went to find the other women. He knew they would have plenty of questions for him, but it was up to Serenity to decide what to tell them.

  Zora, Caridad and Victoria were down on the bank, Victoria examining one of the horse’s hooves, Caridad wading in the river with a sharpened stick in hand, and Zora sitting on a bedroll mending a shirt. She heard Jacob before he left the tangle of bushes that screened the bank from the woods nearer the road and came to join him.

  “How is she?” Zora asked.

  Jacob didn’t have to ask if she knew what had happened. Her wolf senses would tell her even if she hadn’t already guessed.

  “She’s all right,” he said. “She went through hell last night, but it’s over now.” He glanced over Zora’s head toward the river and the women still intent on their work. “She wants to go back to Avalon.”

  “She has chosen not to pursue the outlaws.”

  “That’s right.”

  Zora didn’t ask the obvious question: why Serenity had changed her mind so abruptly, abandoning the very thing that had driven her for as long as Zora had known her.

  And Jacob didn’t see the need to tell her. She knew Serenity as well as anyone; she could probably figure it out for herself. But there was something he very badly wanted to ask her.

  “Serenity told me something this morning,” he said, watching Zora’s face. “She said the only time she’d been with a man had been bad for her. Do you know what she was talking about?”

  Zora bowed her head and began to walk away. Jacob caught up with her.