Chapter 10
ten
. . .
I woke up curled up comfortably in the safest, sweetest place imaginable. The scent of Josiah was everywhere, and it was delicious, sending a rippling pleasure through me every time I inhaled. My face was in the hollow of his neck, and the scent of savory sweetness wafted off his skin. I sniffed again and again, drawing his flavor into my mouth, my lungs, shivering with pleasure until I licked him, tasting the flavor that mixed so beautifully with his own raw scent. Blood was so sweet, but it couldn’t compare to the bouquet of his own salty deliciousness. I licked his neck, down his chest, where more and more dried blood streaked his skin, to his left pectoral, where several raw wounds seeped. I licked his wounds until he stirred and stroked my hair, holding me against him, while his other hand slid down my back to my bare backside.
I sat bolt upright, staring at him, at his naked, mauled chest. I scrubbed at my mouth, trying to get the sweet blood off my tongue, but he was less alarmed, more languid, as he stretched and flexed his beautiful muscles.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, snatching at the sheet and wrapping it around me while I edged away from him.
He gave me a half smile. “Good-morning, beautiful.”
He was beautiful, wounded or not. I had a flash of memory that hit me like a hammer between the eyes, of sinking my teeth into his skin and shaking him like a doll before I threw him across the room. I blinked rapidly as I stared at the gouges in his chest. It looked like knife slashes, not teeth, unless we’re talking sabre-tooth tiger.
I touched my teeth while I reached out and touched his wounds, but that made me drop the sheet, so I had to scramble to get it up around me again. “Did I get serious brain trauma? That’s what it is. I’m not…” I clambered to my feet and jumped a few times on the very large mattress, using legs that I could have sworn were completely inoperable.
“You’re in perfect health,” he said with a contented rumble. His eyes twinkled while he didn’t say anything about my naked body, but that look, I knew that look, and it made desire flood through me like a reckless tsunami.
“Why am I in perfect health? What is that smell?” I looked towards the door, where something delicious was waiting for me.
“You healed, and I believe that is breakfast. You must be hungry.” He started sitting up and winced slightly as the skin pulled around his wounds.
I pushed him back down, and he went, fast and hard, much faster than I expected with my ordinary strength. I looked down at my hands, at the way they curved, and then I had another flashing memory of skin with a dusky blue cast, mottled with pale blue veins, claws like three-inch daggers, hands far larger than the size of my current head.
No.
I started hyperventilating, because everything smelled so intense, and then someone laughed somewhere far away, and it was like it was right next to me.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, staring at my arms, the muscles that now corded me beneath the skin. This was special werewolf magic.
“You shifted with the full moon,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. I’m not a werewolf. I was fighting for Sammy’s place in the pack, not mine.” Only, how did it make sense that the man I’d known and loved would ever leave any female to suffer without intervening to save her? Even if he hated me, he would save her, and with the way he was looking at me, hate wasn’t really at the top of the list.
“You survived the transition, like young Carrie, so we have two new members of the pack.”
“Two? What about Sammy?”
He pursed his lips. “She was a member the moment she was born, as I am her father. I’m sorry for the deception. I’m sorry for the suffering, but that’s the reason we make it a rule to never turn anyone who isn’t already near death. The stronger the human, the more likely they are to fight off the wolf, ending in death to human, wolf, everything. You are too strong to easily shift. So strong.” He smiled ruefully and rubbed his chest over the wounds.
“I’m such an idiot. You planned to turn me all along, to trap me in your pack!”
He raised a brow. “Your daughter bit you, infected you, and I kept you alive.”
“Can I leave the pack?”
“No.”
My heart thumped against my breast bone. “You said that you had flexible boundaries.”
“For ordinary pack members, yes, but you are my mate. You require protection from my enemies, which I will not fail to give you.” His voice was hard, his eyes terrifyingly resolute.
“You’re going to put me in a cage?”
He smiled, flashing his perfect teeth at me. “You put yourself in a cage when you tried to raise Sam on your own, when you kept my own daughter from me and ended up infected. I make you a promise, my sweet Honey. You will grow very content in your cage. I will give you everything your heart desires. I will love you and worship you with every particle of my soul. My dark wolf has sworn you his, and your dark wolf has answered with her own solemn vows.” He touched those bites again, those marks of possession that my dark wolf had?—
NO.
I fell off the bed in my rush to escape the trap that had closed on my foot, no, my heart. But, however far I ran, that trap would come with me, because it was beneath my skin, fur, claws, teeth, and raging hunger that needed to be caged.