Page 24 of Wounded Mate
“What do you like?” he says in his lowest, rumbling voice, the one that sends a tremor of desire spreading through me like a wildfire.
“What don’t I like is the better question, and really, the answer’s quite simple.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t like true pain, but a little pleasure-pain is welcome.” I press my pierced nipples into his chest as a hint. “I don’t like anything that makes my partners uncomfortable. I enjoy pleasing to a great extent.”
“Well, that’s good because you please me greatly.” Bela leans in for a kiss.
I oblige. I’ll never tire of kissing him. I like the dual sensations of his soft lips and his scratchy stubble. “I have a question for you too.” I have many, actually, but this one is the most pressing.
He searches my face. “Anything.”
Maybe I shouldn’t bring it up. But I have to know. “You mentioned a curse. Before. You glossed over it, and I don’t mean to press, but well, I do mean to press, don’t I? How are you cursed? I don’t understand.”
His expression, which was warm and open a second ago, shutters. He closes his eyes.
Instantly I feel bad for asking. “Never mind. We don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t intend to upset you.”
“No, no, it’s all right. You haven’t upset me.” He opens his eyes, and his intense golden irises stare a path straight to my soul.
What does he see in me? Whatever it is loosens his tongue.
“There’s nothing I won’t share with you. Only, it’s a sad tale. I’m afraid it’ll ruin the mood.”
“You won’t ruin anything.” I press my palm to his chest. His heartbeat thumps a quick rhythm. “You couldn’t.”
“Wait until you’ve heard the story. Then you may change your mind.”
That’s ominous. But I want to know him. All of him. “Please tell me?”
“All right.” He’s gathering himself. He takes a deep breath. Tension tightens his shoulders where there had been none before. “Well, the short version is my mother died when I was still a child. My father was devastated. He’d lost her and an unborn child at once.”
“Oh, no.” I rub his arm. It isn’t much, but I’ll offer any comfort I can. “Your father wasn’t the only one who lost people. You lost your mother and a sibling. That had to be awful.”
“It was. Then my father left too. I don’t know where. He didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Bela!” Oh, my heart. My poor Bela. “That’s awful.”
“I told no one. Thought it was my fault, so I didn’t want the pack to know. They’d think I was bad. That I ran him off. But I couldn’t keep it a secret for long. They’d all know when he didn’t show up for the full moon. So I left too.”
“Left your pack?”
He mumbles an affirmative. “Left the pack, my house, my village. All my possessions. Everything I’d ever known.”
My mind struggles to imagine what that must have been like for him. To lose his whole life like that.
“I didn’t have friends to speak of. Acquaintances, sure, but there weren’t many pups my age, and the older ones never liked me. I’ve always been…different. So I disappeared into the forest without looking back. Lived mostly as a wolf, but I’d never had to hunt to feed myself before. Or not solely that anyway. I wasn’t very good at it. Especially in winter.
“One year, when there was heavy snow, I couldn’t scent anything. Couldn’t track prey. I was skinny. Starving. Half-feral and crazed beyond reason. But I knew of a shack not far away where lived an old woman. A witch. And she had chickens. They crowed every morning, even in the bleak of winter.”
Uh-oh.I think I know where this story is going.
“I snuck onto her property and into the coup late one night after I was sure she was sleeping. So careful. So quiet. I was after eggs, not chickens. I knew better than to kill the animal that made the food. But I was starving, and my appetite got the better of me.
“Against my better judgment, I snagged a chicken. I couldn’t resist. It cried out before I could break its neck and set all the others to squawking up a storm. The commotion was enormous. So loud the dead had to have been waking in their graves.
“The old woman was inhumanly fast. She raced out of her shack like it was on fire, a big stick in her hand. I lunged away, but she hurled curses at me one right after the other. In my wolf form, I barely understood her. I was out of my mind with hunger and mostly feral by then anyway. She hollered something about barren lands, withered crops, and a body plagued with torment. I don’t remember all of it.
