Chapter 15
Waking slowly, she knew gentle heat, and the softness of her limbs that came from a long, dreamless sleep.
But yet, she did have dreams. Of men transforming into wolves. A terrible fight. A thrilling chase through the forest. And then…joining her body with the most magnificent creature. Both wolf and man. Des.
Sunlight warmed her body. Eyes closed, she reached down to determine what the heavy thing lying across her waist was.
Her hand met corded flesh, dusted with hair.
A muscled forearm. Her fingers wove with the large hand at the end of the forearm, and the two hands curled together.
There were no claws on this other hand, yet she knew who it belonged to, and what they had done.
There was a shifting behind her, the feel of a broad, powerful body moving.
She let go of the hand so she could turn over to face him.
Opening her eyes, she looked at Des, human now, smiling down at her from behind the curtain of his dark hair.
He reclined on the forest floor, resting on a bent arm.
“You aren’t running away in horror,” he said, a kind of forced lightness in his tone, “so that’s a positive.”
“Why would I run?” She leveled herself up on her elbows and blinked.
Des was completely naked. And his body was stunning.
Taut with defined muscle, long-limbed, every part of him sculpted by an adoring creator.
Hair was sprinkled across his chest and trailed down his flat abdomen, reaching a thicker nest above his lax, and very impressive, cock.
Morning light pierced the canopy and dappled across the silk of his skin.
He was a woodland god.
“Because,” he said, dragging her attention back to his face, “I’m a monster.”
He said this so simply, stating a fact, and yet glints of pain shone in the blue of his eyes.
“Not a monster.” She sat up fully now, as did he.
“Many others think so.”
“Do you hurt anyone?” she demanded.
“Not if I can help it. They usually attack first.” He glanced away, shadows behind his eyes.
“Who? Who attacks?”
He shrugged. “Anyone who finds out what I am. What we are. I’ve been chased, shot at, run from town to town. My…” He swallowed hard. “My parents were killed trying to defend me.”
“Oh, God, Des.” She reached across the space between them and rested her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was changing, from boy to man. That’s when it starts for us. As we mature, the wolf comes out. I didn’t know what was happening, and neither did my family. They did their best, trying to protect me from our small-minded neighbors. But then…”
He cleared his throat, yet when he spoke, his words were thick.
“A neighbor saw me in my wolf form. He gathered a mob and they attacked our home. I barely escaped but they…they were cut down. The last I saw of our house, it was burning to the ground with my parents’ bodies still inside.
I was on my own after that, for many years. ”
Her heart blazed with his pain. “Until…?”
“Until Cyrus.” Des faced her. “He gathered us together, men like me.”
“Only men?”
“I can’t say why, but there aren’t any female werewolves.”
“I see.” She studied him, watching him relate the facts of a world she’d never known existed until last night. “And you met Cyrus.”
“He’d collected us, wolves with no homes, unable to be with our families.
He showed us how we had to live. It’s hard to keep regular employment when you’re constantly in fear of discovery.
Some wander the country, taking odd jobs here and there, always moving.
Others, like Cyrus, like me, Gideon, Hugh, and Liam, we find that crime is the only steady way we can keep ourselves fed or pay for our shelter. ”
He looked at her as if expecting judgment, yet she merely nodded.
“I’d been doing petty thievery,” Des continued after a moment, “sneaking into homes and taking candlesticks and small valuables, when Cyrus found me outside Sheffield, and he offered me not just a way to support myself, but a sort of family, too. And I needed that.”
“You were grateful to him,” she said softly.
Des’s head dipped. “He was an older brother to me. Guiding me. Boxing my ears when he thought I was being foolish. He was there for me, when I’d lost everyone who’d mattered.”
“He changed, you said.”
A shadow crossed Des’s face. “The man, the wolf I knew, transformed over time. He used to make sure we didn’t harm anyone during our robberies.
He grew angrier, harsher. It wasn’t enough to take what we needed to survive.
He wanted more, and if one of our targets got hurt in the process, he didn’t care.
He wanted to hurt them. Worse and worse, he grew.
Until two nights ago, when he finally shot someone.
I don’t know if that coachman died, but it was a bad injury. ”
“And Hugh got hurt in the process.” Her eyes widened. “Hugh—”
“He’s well,” Des assured her quickly. “Once we transform, our wounds heal much faster. I’d warrant that when we return to the house, we’ll find him running up and down the stairs in search of roast mutton and whisky.”
A huff of laughter left her. “There won’t be anything left in the larder.” Her smile faded. “I’m sorry. About Cyrus. And what I made you do.”
“You did nothing,” Des growled. “Cyrus made his choice. He was going to kill you and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Even so,” she pressed, “he meant something to you, and you had to…” She couldn’t get the words out.
“Cyrus forced my hand,” Des said grimly. Yet pain flashed in his eyes as he spoke. “I loved him, and I’ll hate him for pushing me to make that choice. I’ll have to live with the fact that I killed the man who I once thought was my family.”
She had no words in the face of the decision he’d had to make, or in the wake of the violence he’d had to commit. So, she merely sat with him, hoping that her presence alone could assuage his anger and guilt.
“We’re outcasts, men like us,” he said after a pause. “Our wolf selves force us into solitude, and that makes us vulnerable to the Guardians.”
The name itself sent sleet through her veins. “Guardians.”
“A secret organization that’s pledged itself to ridding the world of werewolves.
” Des spoke bleakly. “The name they’ve given themselves tells you all you need to know about how they view their so-called mission.
We’re a disease to be purged from England, from the world.
They hunt us from one end of the country to the other.
Collateral damage doesn’t mean anything to them in the service of the greater good. ”
“Does that mean—”
“If you stood between the Guardians and a werewolf, they’d cut you down without a moment’s hesitation.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, a shield from the chill his words roused.
His own arms enfolded her, and he said fiercely, “They’ll never touch you. I swear it.”
“You can’t swear something that you don’t know.”
“I know that I won’t let the Guardians hurt you.”
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” She gazed into his eyes. “Our paths might never cross.”
He didn’t answer, but in his silence, she heard the weight of what might be.
Des straightened and looked over her shoulder. She turned to see Gideon stepping into the clearing. He carried a bundle of garments, and a cloth-wrapped parcel sat atop that.
His expression was cautious, but at Clara’s welcoming smile, he answered with his own tentative smile.
“Clothes, for Des,” Gideon said, coming forward. “And food, for you.”
“No food for me?” Des asked. He stood and walked with full comfort in his nudity to take the garments from Gideon.
“You’re a wolf,” Gideon answered. “Go hunt.”
“I’d rather have what’s in that cloth.” Des reached for the parcel, but Gideon shoved his hand away.
“After everything,” Gideon said, “Clara deserves it more.”
Her face seemed to catch fire. Dear God, Des was naked, and they had spent the night together.
Gideon also surely possessed the keen senses of a wolf.
She was certain she had Des’s scent all over her.
Inside her. Surely there was no doubt what they’d been doing.
Coming after her talk with Gideon in the glasshouse, and the way they’d flirted, surely he’d think her the worst kind of lightskirt.
Yet Gideon didn’t look at her with reproach. Not even jealousy. He gazed at her tousled hair, her rumpled skirts, her lips which were certainly swollen…and his jaw tightened. With unmistakable arousal.
The heat in her face spread through her body. Her breasts went tight and, between her legs, she seemed to melt. Gideon licked his lips, and she stared at his mouth. He stared openly at her. She couldn’t look away, held in place by a breathless, sudden desire.
How could she want more than one man? Especially after the night she’d spent with Des?
That was for the insatiable people in her secret books.
Her husband had been right. She was a monster, amoral and voracious.
Surely there was something not quite right about her, to have her lover so close by, and to imagine another man’s hands and mouth on her.
He crouched down, close to her, and unwrapped the parcel to reveal a loaf of bread and an apple. When she reached out to take the food from him, their fingers brushed, and a current of lightning traveled through her.
“Think I will go find myself something to eat,” Des said wryly. Dressed now, he vanished into the forest.
Clara tried to focus on the meal that Gideon had brought her. She took a bite of apple.
“My thanks,” she murmured, “for your thoughtfulness. And for protecting me last night. Cyrus…”
Gideon expression dimmed. “The world poisoned him. It broke my heart to see it. But he was going to hurt you, and he’d already almost gotten Hugh killed. He was a danger to all of us, when we can ill-afford to have danger coming from within.”
She set the food aside on the ground. “The story you told me yesterday in the glasshouse…it was about you, as a wolf.”
He nodded. “It’s not an uncommon tale amongst our kind. A frightened boy, the hazard we bring to those close to us. Running, because we haven’t any choice. Constant fear.”
“Solitary.”
“Solitude is something we have in common,” he murmured.
“We did.” She gave him a small smile. “Since you came into my home—”
“Captured it,” he corrected, with a curve of his lips.
“The circumstances weren’t ideal,” she allowed. “Yet since then, the thing that marked my life—loneliness—has gone. With you and Des and Hugh, I’m not so lonely anymore.”
She couldn’t stop the shyness in her voice, and she glanced at him through her lashes.
“Nor I.” Gideon still wore a gentle smile. “These past two days, I’ve been…at peace. Because of you.”
Her brows rose. “I’ve done nothing.”
“You gave us, gave me, a place of rest. You listened. And you wouldn’t have spent last night with Des, I wouldn’t smell him on you, if you were afraid or horrified.”
A blush stained her cheeks at the candid mention of Des’s scent clinging to her body, testament to what they’d done.
“You don’t know how rare that is,” Gideon continued, “to find someone like you, accepting of who we are…”
“It’s marvelous,” she insisted. “You are marvelous.”
The air between them thickened and crackled with invisible currents.
He leaned close. Slowly, he brought his hand up, cupping her jaw. His gaze flicked to her mouth, then up to her eyes. The depths of his gaze stole her breath.
Gideon waited. Giving her time to decide what she wanted.
She brought her lips to his.
The kiss was soft, exploratory. He tasted her in sips, learning her, letting her decide the pace. Her pulse fluttered at the feel of his mouth against hers. Yearning imbued the kiss in gentle waves, all the longing and sweet desire swirling together until her head spun from the wondrousness of it.
Growing bold, she touched the tip of her tongue to the seam of his lips.
He groaned and opened for her. Sweetness gave way to heat as they both took the kiss deeper.
He did not kiss her as though she was something fragile and breakable.
Instead, his mouth was purposeful, meeting strength with strength, and she sank into the intoxication of savoring him.
She had the vague impression of him moving to kneel in front of her, gathering her up in his arms, pulling her snug against the taut contours of his body.
His hands were in her hair, and she let hers rove over him, feeling everywhere he was firm and unyielding, the lean shapes of him shifting beneath his clothing.
And then, someone was behind her. His hands wandered over her body, stroking along her hips, cupping her breasts through her bodice. Lips trailed along her throat and pressed into the tender place where her neck met her shoulder.
Des.
As Gideon continued to kiss her, Des did the same, moving his mouth over her exposed flesh. She was snug between them, Gideon in front, Des behind.
Only in her books was such a thing possible. And in her deepest fantasies, she’d imagined herself in this very scenario. Two men, focused on her. Yet she’d hardly ever believed it could exist outside the pages of a novel to become a reality.
“Do you want us to continue?” Gideon murmured into her mouth.
“Is it all right if…” she pushed past her shame, “…I say yes?”
Both men gave low chuckles, the sound vibrating through her.
“Of course it is, sparrow,” Des rumbled. “We only want what you want.”
“Have you ever…?”
“Des and I,” Gideon said huskily, “we’ve shared women.”
“And they like it?” she asked.
“They do,” Des answered.
“You will, too,” Gideon said.