Page 25 of Purchased

She shakes her head.

I breathe out a little and relax somewhat. She has not given her heart, even if she happens to have given her body.

I reach out and cup her chin with my hand, rubbing the pad of my thumb over her lower lip in a gesture faintly reminiscent of the way I handled her pussy in the orphanage. I can see by the blush on her cheeks she has put two and two together as well, and feels the same sparking of sexual intensity between us.

We have chemistry that cannot be denied, and whenever I touch her, it flares into intense, all-consuming life.

“Who are you… what are you…”

She asks the questions with her voice muted, but her tone intense. She is shaking. I don’t think she can help it. Her arousal is tinged with fear, and the combined scent is absolutely intoxicating.

She knows who I am, superficially at least. She’s not asking for my name. She’s not asking for my position. She’s asking for something deeper, something I am not sure I can answer now.

This should be so straightforward. She should be my virginal mate, she should submit to my cock, and she should be bonding with me as nobody has ever bonded before. There should be nothing even faintly resembling a question of anything in either of our minds.

This is the sort of nonsense reserved for humans, all the wondering and the worrying and the uncertainty.

It is my job to provide clarity and leadership. Sitting around wondering who took what should have been mine, if they took what should have been mine, and how such a thing happened, and all the other terrible questions that lead inevitably to terrible conclusions, is of no use to either one of us.

I shall have to do what humans do. I shall have to choose to love her regardless of what has come before, and what might yet come.

“I am your mate,” I tell her, sliding my fingers gently down her neck and wrapping them lightly around her throat. I feel her tremble as excitement courses through her. It is not so long since she was in her animal form, and then even less time since she writhed to climax on my fingers. Her body is craving my cock. That is simple instinct, and it will not be denied. She is as receptive as she is likely to be, and it is time to impress on her that she has a place with me.

“I am the one you will submit to for the rest of your life. I am the one who will own you. I am the one who will love you. I am the one who will take you and care for you and sometimes…” I hold back from saying the filthier, darker things:claim you, use you, breed you.

She is looking at me with a sort of feral innocence that makes saying such things far too inappropriate.

I want her to trust me.

But that might be almost impossible. She has been out of place all her life, and I know too well that those who have been out of place are vulnerable to exploitation. They are betrayed over and over by those they go to in the hopes of connection.

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes engage in intimacy with you,” I tell her, letting my thumb rub over her lower lip again. “Have you done that before?”

She draws back, bites her lower lip, and I see her expression go closed. My stomach sinks as I realize that likely means she has done something before. There is some experience lurking in her past. Her innocence has been taken, over and over.

“There is nothing you cannot tell me.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes go blank in a way that tells me she is locking herself away. Her secrets, for the moment, remain hers.

“You’ll learn to trust, in time.”

She draws away from me, as if using the wordtrustwas more of a betrayal than bringing her down with my pack in a field. I have in my hands someone who would rather be beaten than understood.

I do not know if she is a virgin. I do not know if she gave herself willingly, or was violated. I know nothing. The urge to interrogate is supreme, but I know it will do more harm than good.

I could force the truth from her…

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you understand your position, your place with me?”

* * *

Beatrix

I don’t know that I’ll ever understand my place with him. I spent my life half-imagining, half-remembering that I was a wolf, joined in my dreams by packs of beasts who comforted me when I felt scared or alone.

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