Anne scrambled away from him. She grabbed her blanket from the ground and wrapped it around her. Trembling, she watched, both helpless and terrified. What she saw taking place before her could not be real. Such things only happened in nightmares. Merrick still lay on the ground, naked, contorting, but as she watched, hair began to cover his body. His limbs shrank, his features changed, and where once a man lay on the blanket it was a beast that rose on all fours and stood staring at her in the darkness.
“Merrick?” she whispered.
The beast did not respond. Instead, it glanced skyward at the full moon. The wolf howled, and in that sound Anne heard all the sorrow and anger of a man betrayed.
The animal lowered its head and stared at Anne. It peeled back its lips, displaying impressive fangs. Loved by him as a man, killed by him as a beast. That thought floated through Anne’s mind before the darkness crept deeper into her vision, surrounded her from all sides, swallowed her whole.
Chapter Nine
The sun peeking through the trees woke Anne. She was curled in a ball, her blanket clutched around her. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was or why. She tried to move and her muscles protested. The ache between her legs brought the night before flooding back. She sat abruptly and glanced around the campsite.
Merrick sat on a log staring at her. He’d donned his trousers and sat with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, shivering. He looked human again… almost. His eyes were haunted.
“What happened to me, Anne?”
She didn’t want to think about that. She wanted desperately to pretend last night had never happened… at least up to a certain point. “You turned into a wolf.”
He blinked. “What do you mean? I acted like a beast?”
Anne had trouble grasping what had happened last night, much less explaining it, and to the person it happened to. She could only be straightforward. “No, Merrick. A wolf. An animal. You turned into one before my very eyes.”
He ran a shaky hand through his hair; then he held his hand in front of him and stared at it. “What you’re saying is impossible.”
“It is possible,” she countered, tugging her blanket tighter around her in the chilly morning air. “I would have never thought so… until last night.”
He rose and shrugged from his blanket. “We must have dreamed it,” he said, and the look in his eyes begged her to agree with him.
Could Anne pretend? Her whole life had been a pretense up until now. She must be honest with him and with herself. “Your gifts,” she said. “Could this be another one of them?”
“Gifts?” he growled. “If what you say happened to me did, it’s no gift, Anne. It’s a curse.”
“What do you recall of last night?” she asked.
His angry features softened for a moment. Merrick joined Anne, bending beside her. “Us,” he answered. “Together. As one. Then the pain. The horrible pain. After that, nothing until I woke naked and shivering in the woods this morning.”
Anne glanced down at her hands clasped around the blanket. “I thought I was going to die,” she confessed, glancing back up at him. “When you stood before me as a wolf, I thought you would kill me.”
His eyes misted and he glanced away from her. “I would never hurt you, Anne. I’d take my own life before I’d let myself, in any form, take yours.” He glanced back at her. “I’ve got to go from here.”
Today was to be her wedding day. And no, it would not have been a grand affair with flowers and a church and all of society turned out, but whatever it was, it was meant to be hers. Last night, Anne had found all she was looking for in this man. She couldn’t let the dream go.
“Maybe it won’t happen again.” Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but Anne wasn’t certain she wasn’t right. Perhaps last night they were both drugged, drugged on each other, when she thought he’d turned into a wolf.
“What if it does, Anne?”
“What if it doesn’t?” she countered.
He stared into her eyes for a long time before he said, “All right. I’ll give it one more night. I hope it’s not a mistake, Anne.”
Merrick went hunting in the afternoon. His senses, always stronger, he suspected, than those of a normal man, were now heightened tenfold. He heard as he had never heard before. Saw movement in the brush and the distance no mortal man could see. At times, when he spotted an animal, he did not see the animal at all but only the blood pumping red through its veins.
Could what Anne said happened last night have really happened? Flashes had gone through his mind all day. Flashes of them together, making love, then the pain, the sight of his hand, covered in hair, claws jutting from his fingernails. He felt almost sick now with the memory of it… sick, and yet as he watched Anne move around the camp he felt something else. Something primal. The instinct to mate with her again.
Merrick shook his head and tried to dislodge the thought. He’d spilled his seed in Anne last night, certain that he would marry her today. If he really was this beast now, this man by day and an animal by night, he could not marry her. And yet he might have planted his bastard. He above all men should know better than to do that to any child.
“Anne, come here,” he called.
She glanced up from throwing another handful of branches on the fire, where a spit roasted their supper. He hoped she would show wariness of him, but she did not hesitate to come to him.
“What is it, Merrick?”
She stood before him, so beautiful, her eyes etched with worry… worry for him, he realized. “Sit.” He nodded toward the place next to him.
“But our supper—” she began.
“Can wait,” he finished.
Anne sat beside him. He took her pale, delicate hand in his. “Tonight, once the moon is up, if it happens again, I want you to make me a promise.”
“That tree,” Anne said, nodding in the direction where their bedrolls were spread. “I can climb it easily if—”
“No,” he interrupted, staring deep into her eyes. “I don’t want you to run from me, Anne.” Merrick took the pistol from his waistband and handed it to her. “I want you to kill me.”
Her lovely eyes widened. She refused to take the weapon he tried to press into her hand. “No, Merrick,” she breathed. “Don’t ask me to do that. I love you.”
His heart twisted inside of his chest. He took her hand and forced the pistol into it. “If you love me, you’ll do this for me, Anne. I’ll have no life. A man by day, a beast by night. I’d be better off dead.”
Tears filled her eyes. She shook her head. “You can have a life, Merrick. One with me. Like we planned. I’ve been thinking. We could go to the Wulf brothers—”
“No,” he interrupted her. “I’ll not crawl begging to them. I have my pride, Anne. If they are my blood kin, our father wanted them to have nothing to do with me or he’d have seen that I was raised alongside of them. He’d have seen they knew about me before he died.”
“But maybe they know what is happening to you,” Anne persisted. “It is said they are cursed. Perhaps the curse is not one of insanity as all believe. Maybe they suffer what you now suffer. Maybe they know a way—”
“Anne,” he said more gently. “Don’t you see? It’s because our father must have known something was wrong with me that he kept me a secret, hidden away, ashamed and embarrassed about me. No, I’ll not go to them.”
She threw the pistol down and rose, staring down at him. “You’d rather die?” she asked. “Is that it, Merrick? Your pride is worth more than your life, than our life together?”
He rose to meet her glare for glare. “We have no life together,” he drew out as if she were a slow-witted child. “Not if it happens again tonight. Now, promise me.”
Anne shook her head. “I will not promise you. I don’t think you would harm me, Merrick. You could have last night. I was unconscious. You might not remember what happened, but I believe you are still somehow you, even when the beast has taken your physical form.”
“You believed your aunt and uncle cared more for you than they did for your inheritance, too,” he reminded her unkindly. When she took a step back from him, as if he’d struck her, he felt like a beast indeed. “Forgive me for that,” he said softly. “It was a cruel thing to say.”
Anne straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “The truth is often cruel. So while we are on the subject of honesty, maybe you should examine your own motives for refusing help of any kind from anyone. I think you like it, Merrick. Being a bastard. Being bitter. Wanting your revenge. If you have all that, then you don’t need anything else, or anyone. You don’t have to be responsible. You don’t have to share your heart. You don’t have to give. You don’t have to succeed where you feel your father has failed. You don’t have to one day look in the mirror and realize that you are just like him.”
“I am not like him!” Merrick hadn’t meant to shout—didn’t mean to make her jump—but dammit, he was not like the sorry excuse for a man who must have spawned him. He’d never abandon a child of his… or would he? For all he knew, he was already doing that. Merrick was no longer hungry. He needed time to think. Time alone. He walked away.
He halfway expected Anne to stop him, but she did not. It was better that she didn’t. His physical hunger had disappeared, but his hunger for her was another matter. He wanted her. But if he could not have her in love, he should not take her in lust. The man knew that… the beast that prowled inside of him did not.
Chapter Ten
Anne had dozed off when Merrick woke her. He crawled into her bedroll naked. She had begun to fear he wouldn’t return. She’d checked the horses tethered in a nearby meadow often to make sure the stallion still grazed alongside her mare. Anne had eaten, cleaned their camp, done all she could think to do to bide her time; then she’d become sleepy without anything to distract her.
“Anne,” he breathed, pulling her close to him. She went willingly, snuggling into his warmth. His hair was damp. He’d obviously found a stream to bathe in, and she longed to do the same. She’d cleaned up as best she could earlier with water from their flasks.
“Do you know your scent travels through the forest and finds me no matter how far away I go?” he asked, nipping gently at her throat. “Your scent will always call me back to you. I cannot resist it.”
Her hands traveled over him as if she had no will over them. Could she and Merrick have been dreaming last night? Could two people, joined in body, in soul and heart, share the same nightmare?
More than anything, Anne wanted to believe they could, that they in fact had. Her hands, moving over his warm, muscled flesh, told her he was only a man. He pressed against her and she felt his readiness for her. Her pulses leaped. Anne closed her eyes and refused to think about what had happened last night. Behind closed lids, she wouldn’t see if his own eyes were glowing blue in the darkness. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
He did, very gently, which nearly broke her heart. His body shook with his need of her, and yet his lips were tender. She knew in that instant that she should never fear him. No matter if they had shared a nightmare or if the nightmare had been real, Merrick did not have it in his heart to hurt her. Whoever he was, whatever he was, she loved him.
Her hands crept into his hair and she slanted her mouth beneath his, opened wider, and invited him to invade. He did. Tenderness burned away beneath the rise of scorching passion. Suddenly he was pulling at her clothes, and she did all she could to aid him. Their breaths grew ragged between kisses. His hands moved over her, everywhere, on her breasts, down her stomach, between her legs.
She was already wet for him by the time his fingers stroked her. He moaned into her mouth and parted her legs with his knees. He’d been gentle upon his entrance last night. Tonight he forged ahead, thrusting deep in one smooth motion that made her gasp.
“Wrap your legs around me, Anne,” he commanded.
Without hesitation, she obeyed him. He grasped her hips and thrust deep again, and again, over and over until she tingled, ached with both pleasure and pain, holding on to him as he took them over the edge of sanity. He became primal, biting at her neck, but never hard enough to draw blood, and she in turn used her nails on his back, urged him onward, became as primal as he. The tension coiled inside of her—grew until she exploded. She arched against him and screamed his name.
One deep plunge and she felt him pulsing inside of her, felt him spilling his seed.
She clung to him, both of them gasping for breath, their hearts beating wildly against each other… then the first spasm of pain took him. Merrick jerked away from her.
“The pistol, Anne,” he ground out. “Get the pistol!”
She sat, clutching the blanket to her naked breasts, staring down at him. Their eyes met and locked. Slowly, she shook her head. “No, Merrick. I will not.”
Pain made him spasm, made him curl into a ball, his knees up against his chest. His eyes glowed blue, but even in the darkness, she saw them fill with tears.
“Please, Anne,” he managed. “I would die if I ever hurt you. I love you.”
Reaching out, she touched his hair, smoothed it from his face. “I trust you, Merrick. Now you must find the strength to trust yourself.”
“Damn you, Anne!” he shouted. “Your trusting heart will get you killed!”
Another spasm, one stronger, took him. Anne scooted away from him. She came up against the tree she had told him she would climb if she felt threatened, but she didn’t ready herself to leap into action. The pistol was in a pack she’d placed at the base of the tree. With trembling hands, she reached inside the pack and drew the weapon out.
Before her, on the blanket where they had just made love again, Merrick danced the dance of the wolf. His body twisted and turned. The hair came, then the teeth, the claws, his body shrank, and then he was gone. The wolf came swiftly to its feet.
Despite what she’d told Merrick, her first instinct was to grasp the pistol securely, lift it, and take aim. The animal stared deep into her eyes. They were Merrick’s eyes looking at her through the face of a wolf. Anne lowered the pistol.
“You want to kill me, then go ahead,” she said softly. “But the man you share your skin with will be very angry.”
The wolf cocked its head to one side. A moment later it turned and trotted off into the night. Anne released the breath she’d been holding. She laid the pistol within reach and tugged the blanket up around her. She would wait until morning to see if Merrick had told her the truth. If her scent would always bring him back to her.
Anne spent the whole night waiting, listening, hoping Merrick would return to her in the form of the man she loved. A twig snapped and she glanced up. Merrick stood naked in the bushes. He shivered in the morning air. Anne clutched her blanket tighter, rose, and went to him. They simply stared at each other for a moment before she stepped forward, opened her blanket, and enveloped him inside with her. His skin was freezing.
“Why didn’t you do what I told you to do, Anne?” he asked against her hair. “We both know now it was no dream we shared.”
“And we both know you didn’t hurt me,” she countered.
“Yet,” he ground out.
She tilted her head to look up at him. “Why must you believe the worst of yourself, Merrick?”
He met her gaze with a hard one of his own. “And how can you stand here with me, sharing your warmth, when you know what I am now?”
She pulled the blanket tighter around them. “Because I love you,” she answered. “That’s what love is, Merrick. It is unconditional. Is your love for me not the same?”
He struggled out of the blanket and away from her. Merrick walked to where he’d discarded his clothing the night before and began to dress. “It’s because I love you that I must do what is best for you, Anne. I’m taking you to London.”
Her heart sank. “London?”
“You surely have friends there you can stay with. You’ll find yourself a suitable man and be quick about
it, just as you should have done from the start.”
Anne frowned at him. “I am not leaving. We are one day’s ride from Gretna Green and I intend to go there, and to marry you, just as we agreed.”
Merrick tugged his shirt over his head. “I won’t marry you, Anne. Not now.”
They were back to this again. Anne felt frustration knot her stomach. “Then you will take me home,” she said. “Not to London.”
Merrick paused in his dressing to rub his forehead. “You cannot go back there and you know it. Not until—”
“I will not marry another,” she interrupted. “I will go home and make the best of my life, wiser now where my aunt and uncle are concerned. Maybe in time you will come back. Maybe in time you will love me as I love you.”
He cussed and stormed to her side. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Anne. You know I do. But—”
“But your pride will keep you from having all that should be yours,” she interrupted again.
Merrick wondered what was wrong with the lass. Couldn’t she see it was impossible for them to be together now? That he was cursed? That she would be cursed right along with him? Never mind she would have been regardless of what he was but because of who he was. It was foolish of him to agree to her proposal of marriage. What had he been thinking? That she could make him more than he was?
She had already made him more than he ever dreamed he’d be. Loved, by a woman like her. Thoughts of revenge against her class had faded beside the wonder of her love. He’d judged all by the actions of one man. Anne had shown him there was goodness still left in the world, kindness to be found from others, never mind if they lived in a grand house or a stable.
Through her, he had felt hope. Hope that he might rise above who he was and be a better man. Now he knew being a better man had nothing to do with what side of the blanket he was born on or where he called home. But he learned these lessons too late. Now he was not even a man. He was something else.
Merrick stared down at Anne, standing with her blanket draped around her, chin held high. Even without her fine clothes and her fancy manners, she was a lady through and through. His mother would have liked her. And Anne was right. It was his cursed pride that made him less than he could be. It had always been his pride.
Love At First Bite Page 34
