by Carol Davis
Maybe more than that, because she knew where the island was.
Luckily, only a few of the older wolves were harsh and strict enough in their beliefs to demand that an invading human be placed in exile, or worse. Abby had no idea of the true nature of the pack; all she had seen was one man living alone in the woods. If she was told that his family was here, that this island belonged to them and they preferred to be left alone, she’d likely be willing to accept that. It had happened before, and each time the intruder had promised to say nothing about the island to anyone. And really, why would they? There was nothing valuable here.
Everything would be fine, Aaron told himself firmly. No one would harm Abby. No one would want to.
She stirred and blinked, coming awake slowly, smiling when she saw him. She moved closer to him underneath the covers and drifted her hands over his body, finding a way to mold herself against him. He could smell her arousal and knew she’d found his by the way her smile quirked into a grin.
He kissed her forehead, then her lips.
To his surprise, she drew back.
“Do you–” she stammered. “Is there–”
He raised an eyebrow in inquiry.
“A bathroom,” she said. “There isn’t—I mean—where do you–”
“In the woods,” he said with a twitch of one shoulder.
Unsurprisingly, that didn’t seem to be the answer she’d wanted. He could put something together for her, he supposed; he had a bucket, and he could lay a couple of pieces of wood across the top so she could sit. See? he heard Luca’s voice say at the back of his mind. These humans are too spoiled by their comforts. They can’t even piss without their contraptions. But before he could make the offer, Abby jumped out of bed, pulled on her dress, and scurried outside as fast as a rabbit.
She came back a couple of minutes later looking sheepish but relieved.
“I could have done something–” Aaron said.
Abby shook her head. “I went camping with my family sometimes when I was a kid. We learned how to go in the woods. And how to look out for poison ivy and whatnot. It’s all right. Awkward, but all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“As long as it’s not snowing.”
She was standing in a spill of sunlight that made her look remarkably beautiful. Aaron—who had seen enough humans on the mainland to know that among her kind she was probably considered pretty but not exceptional—allowed himself to admire her fully, remembering how soft her skin was, how sweet she had tasted. The memory kindled new warmth in his belly, and he thought he might suggest that they stay in bed, at least for a while.
“Could I–” she said.
He tipped his head, wondering what was on her mind now.
“I was thinking about a bath. Washing up? I smell a little rank.”
To him, she smelled nothing of the kind. Yes, her skin was rich with the smells of their mating, and of her exertion the day before, but that wasn’t a bad scent. It meant she was young, active, fertile. No wolf would ever object to any of that. But he understood that she wanted to look (and smell) her best for him, and no wolf would object to that, either.
Nodding, he slipped out of bed, took a shallow basin out of the cupboard, and carried it outside to fill it with water from the barrel. He brought it back indoors and set it on top of the cupboard along with the remains of his bar of soap and a small towel.
“The best I can offer,” he told her.
“It’s fine.”
She didn’t seem to be saying that grudgingly, and he wondered how much hardship she’d gone through in her life. He was aware that a large number of humans lived under extreme conditions, but he hadn’t thought she was one of them. Her dress, even though it was badly wrinkled now, seemed to be nicely made, and her purse looked like an expensive one. Her nails (both fingers and toes) were manicured and polished.
She was a puzzle, he decided. An enticing, beautiful puzzle.
“I’ll go and find us some food,” he said, thinking he would give her some privacy in which to do her cleaning up. “Do you like fish?”
“I do.”
“Even for breakfast?”
“That’s fine.”
“It shouldn’t take very long.”
Her stomach gurgled, something that made her blush with embarrassment, and she turned quickly toward the cupboard and the bar of soap. Smiling, Aaron took a moment to pull on his jeans and t-shirt and shoes, then left the cabin and closed the door behind him.
As he’d hoped, spearing a couple of fish in the cove didn’t take long. Once he had them in hand, he went swiftly to the place where the best mushrooms grew and gathered enough of them for this one meal, then collected some greens and some more blueberries. He could tell by the position of the sun that he’d been gone less than an hour, a length of time that he hoped wouldn’t seem unreasonable to Abby.
It didn’t.
She was clean now, and smelled of soap. She’d brushed her hair and had put on fresh clothing, another dress that he supposed had come from the depths of her enormous bag, this one with a fuller skirt than the other one. It drifted and twirled around her legs when she moved, something he found very intriguing.
He went about preparing the meal with nervous chills running through his body. He told her he liked to cook, and urged her to sit in a sunny spot near the cabin while he scaled and gutted the fish, then started a fire in the fire pit near the edge of the clearing. He could tell from the way she wrinkled her nose at the heap of fish guts, then looked away, that she wasn’t fond of dealing with such things.
“You don’t fish?” he asked.
Again, she wrinkled her nose. “The boys—my brothers—always did that. Cleaning them.”
He’d been careful not to get any of the blood and fluids on his clothes. After he’d buried the offal, he washed up at the barrel and ran his now-clean hands through his hair.
A good meal, he thought. She’d realize he was a good provider.
Then he stopped himself short. What difference would it make whether she believed he was a good provider or not? It wasn’t like she’d be staying here, as if he had any responsibility for her at all. She’d be leaving today, after he’d found someone to take her back to the mainland. More than likely, she’d never think of him again.
That hurt, but it was foolish to believe otherwise.
Shrugging off any thought of tomorrow, he went into the cabin to fetch what was left of his loaf of bread. He employed a trick his mother had taught him: he sliced some of the stale bread, sprinkled it with some water, and placed it over the fire to toast.
When the meal was finally ready, he handed Abby a plate with all the gravity of a renewal ceremony, hoping that she wouldn’t reject it. It was the best he could do, a better meal than he’d eaten himself in more than two weeks.
“It looks good,” Abby said, smiling down at her plate, then at him.
He sat down too and balanced his plate on his lap. It was definitely the most elaborate meal he’d had since before the beginning of his Separation period, but that wasn’t saying much.
They ate without speaking for a few minutes. Abby seemed to enjoy the fish, and nibbled on the toasted bread without complaint. She was probably hungry enough to eat almost anything without complaining, but the sweet expression on her face told him there was more to it than that.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
“I would have liked to offer you more.”
“That’s all right. This is fine.”
When the fish and bread were gone, she tried one of the mushrooms but didn’t seem too fond of it. The blueberries were more of a success.
“You’re not eating much,” she pointed out.
He remembered his mother saying, When you waste food, you injure the pack, and scooped up some more fish. He cleaned his plate quickly, mushrooms and all, then set it aside so he could focus on Abby.
They’d set up their meal picnic style, outside the cabin in the sunshine
, sitting on a spare blanket he’d pulled out of the cupboard. The breeze had shifted a couple of times during the morning, and the clearing was full of the fragrance of wildflowers and pine, much more pleasant than the inside of the cabin.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Abby said.
“You think so?”
Her tongue slid across her lips, cleaning them of crumbs. “I love the outdoors, when it’s quiet like this. There’s a yard behind where I live, and I can sit out there, but the neighbors are always out there playing the radio or running a leaf blower or something. My favorite time is early in the morning, before everybody else gets up. It’s so peaceful.” She was quiet for a moment, and seemed to be weighing what she would say next, which turned out to be, “Do you live here by yourself?”
“No. There are others.”
“Is this a big island?”
“Big enough.”
“That’s mysterious.”
“We don’t need much. We lead a simple life here.”
She nodded and went back to thinking. After that, she spent a while basking in the sunshine, not looking at anything in particular.
As much as he could, Aaron looked at her: the way her long, wavy hair drifted around her shoulders in the breeze, the way her dress was fitted around her breasts, the curve of her legs. She’d come outside without her flimsy pink shoes, and he frowned at the amount of damage they’d done to her feet. Her littlest toes were red and blistered, and there were more blisters on her heels.
Foolish.
But he couldn’t condemn her for that. She was only doing what humans always did. And she hadn’t expected to come here, to have to make her way through the woods. He couldn’t find fault with her any more that he could with a child, or a bird. She simply needed help.
And you’ve done that.
Would Luca have? he wondered. Or any of the others? No, they wouldn’t have left her in the woods, but would they have fed her? Given her their bed to sleep in? Worse yet, crawled into bed with her?
He could imagine their outrage when they found out what he’d done.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Abby said.
That jerked his attention back to her. She seemed as relaxed as she had early this morning, when she’d drifted awake to find him looking at her. All the distress of the day before seemed to be long gone.
“I’m not sure—what does that mean?” he asked.
“It means I wonder what you’re thinking.”
They’d come together near this very spot, under the moonlight last night. He remembered the warmth of her, her eagerness to welcome him, the way she’d clutched and pulled at him, urging him deeper, closer. The way she’d come out of the cabin in search of him, her scent rich and strong. As if…
As if…
But no, that couldn’t be true.
A bond? Was that possible?
He had no experience with what a mating bond felt like, but he was sure that couldn’t have been it. That had simply been the urge to couple, something that was very natural for a male his age—particularly for one who hadn’t had release for a long time. Natural for her too, he supposed.
He flared his nostrils slightly and drew in her scent. He didn’t move his head or his hands, and hoped she wouldn’t know what he was doing.
He wanted her again. Badly.
“I really acted kind of crazy yesterday,” she said quietly, looking at the blanket. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t do the sensible thing. I overreacted. See, there was this guy. I thought I liked him, but it seems like I keep doing the same thing. I pick people who tell me what to do. People like my father.”
Aaron picked up a mushroom from her plate and popped it into his mouth. “Fathers are supposed to give advice and instruction,” he murmured as he chewed it. He licked his lips after he’d swallowed it.
“Not in a way that makes you feel like you’re stupid.”
He took a deep breath, thinking of the criticism he’d received during his youth, not only from his father, but from the elders and even his brother. He’d always tried to tell himself that it was an unavoidable part of growing to maturity, but that hadn’t made the criticism any easier to bear.
“Enduring makes you strong,” he muttered.
She reached out to touch his hand, which was drifting back toward her plate. “Then I don’t want to be that kind of strong.”
There was hurt in her eyes, something that went deep and seemed to have been there for a long time.
“Nor do I,” Aaron admitted.
“My mother died when I was eight,” she said. “I guess it—I don’t know. I guess my father was so hurt by losing her that he went kind of crazy. He got really harsh after that. Criticizing every little thing. He didn’t like my friends, especially not my boyfriends, or the college I wanted to go to, or the clothes I wore. He always had a better idea. And my brothers got to be just like him. When I got out of college, I moved away so I didn’t have to listen to them any more. But”—her voice caught—“somehow, I keep picking people who are just like him. They want to tell me what to wear, how to do my hair, what music to listen to. What I should think. They say you pick what you’re used to, and I never used to believe that, but I guess it’s true.”
Why she was telling him all this, he wasn’t sure. Maybe she felt comfortable opening her heart to a stranger. He was aware that humans sometimes did that, and had experienced it a couple of times on the mainland.
Maybe he looked compassionate.
Either way, she had begun to look lonely and sad. With a mournful feeling deep in his chest he moved across the blanket and gathered her into his arms. She settled into his embrace quickly, wrapping an arm around him and tucking her head into the curve of his neck and shoulder.
“Don’t be sad,” he told her.
Whether it was truly the call of the bond or simply a desire to couple, within minutes they had come together again. She hadn’t put on any underwear, he saw as she pulled up her skirt and lay back, something that both amused and surprised him. He had to shove the plates off onto the dirt of the clearing to give them room on the blanket, then leaned down and began to tease her warm, wet folds with his tongue. She groaned, a long sound that was almost like music, and gripped the blanket in her fists as he poked the tip of his tongue inside her. The taste of her was wonderful, both salty and sweet, and he lapped at it eagerly, sliding his hands underneath the full curves of her ass so he could grip them.
Her noises turned to a steady “ah-ah-ah” as he licked and stroked, rising in pitch, then falling. Her hips came up off the ground, seeking more contact, urging him to go deeper, to bring her to the edge.
Instead, he drew back and sat up.
“Noooo,” she moaned, reaching for him.
Smiling, he unfastened his jeans and pushed them down over his hips. His cock popped out eagerly, and he slipped it inside her welcoming heat with a grunt of pleasure. Abby grabbed him with both hands and pulled him down to kiss him fervently, clinging to fistfuls of his t-shirt and groaning again as she used her heels to push him deeper and deeper.
As he thrust, he let his wolf slip free a little. He felt it howl and flex, anxious to break through, to take control, but he pushed it back.
Not yet.
Again, the beast howled and bayed. It didn’t struggle any further; for now, it had what it wanted.
“Aaron,” Abby moaned. “God, Aaron…”
He began to thrust harder, faster, Abby’s fingers digging deep into his shoulders. There was a desperate expression on her face, a deep, demanding need, and she tightened her legs around him like a vise. Off in the distance, he heard a chorus of howling, something that sounded like the entire pack had come together, but it only lasted for a moment. Abby didn’t seem to hear it at all.
Then she matched the cry. Her head arched back and she let out a low, reverberating scream and clenched his cock, the whole core of her
throbbing and pulsing in her orgasm. He reached his climax only a moment later, spilling deep inside her, breathing in big, starving gulps.
Both of them were gasping when he withdrew.
They lay there for a long time, completely spent, staring up at the sky.
Six
He didn’t venture toward the settlement that day, or the next. Abby said nothing more about a boat, about rescue.
Instead, they talked about their lives.
She told him about her childhood, the time when her mother had been alive, when she’d felt loved and cherished, free to do and be whatever she chose. Back then, she’d thought about being an explorer, someone who traveled from state to state, country to country, simply to see what was there. She and her mother had taken drives sometimes for hundreds of miles, no destination in mind, the car windows rolled down so the wind would sweep through the car, music blaring from the radio.
“That sounds very nice,” he told her. In truth, he didn’t think much of cars as a way to get from one place to another; he preferred to run. But he didn’t tell her that. He simply listened, and agreed.
“It was,” she said.
“What sort of music?”
“Sixties rock. Girl groups.”
Aaron had no idea what that was. He understood that “rock” meant a type of music he’d heard bits of, but… “sixties”? And “girl groups”? Groups of females who sang, he supposed—and that made him think of his mother and the other females singing softly around the fire on warm nights, and the way females in their wolf forms would sometimes gather together to croon. Those were pleasant, alluring sounds, and he found himself becoming curious about these “girl groups” Abby enjoyed.
