Page 51 of The Wolf and the Wildflower
“Will you like to tell me about it?”
“Which part of you is asking?” he asked, a curious lilt in his tone.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it the mind doctor who wants to know, the one who will report her findings and conclusions to Dr. Southby for dissection? Or my Wildflower?”
My Wildflower. Jules dismissed the intimate and possessive way he said her moniker and thought about his question. It was both. Yet she was also aware deep down it was more than a desire to explore his experiences for scientific reasons. She wanted to know who he was…simply for herself. And what she learned she did not want to write down for others to read and speculate upon, to analyze, dissect, and form theories.
She wanted to hold it close and unpack it in the night when she lay in her bed alone. She wanted his words only for herself. The awareness shattered her, and as she stared at him, a large lump grew in her throat. “I believe it is best I return inside, Your Grace.”
“Stay with me.” He hauled her up onto a large branch that easily held their weight, lifting his hand to cup her cheek. He hissed, pleasure sparking in his gaze. All from touching her. The awareness was a painful ache that spread to encompass her body.
In a tender glide, he rubbed his calloused thumb over her cheek. She loved the way he touched her, how he allowed her to touch him.
“I believe a part of your job is to ask about my day, hmm?”
The gentle request hooked low in her belly and tugged. Why is it that she couldn’t look at him and not feel that irregular skip of her heartbeat? Jules had been around many gentlemen throughout her lifetime, and not one had ever made her breath catch or her breasts ache beneath their linen bindings.
It was a damnable curiosity. Suddenly she wished to have had a female friend she could sit and speak with, a person she could ask about all these feelings and questions bubbling inside. When she’d decided to leave England, her mother had tried to speak with her about being wary of the opposite sex and their wily ways. Jules had been so astonished she had laughingly brushed her aside. Her entire life had been lived as a gentleman, and she wanted to maintain that life. How would there ever be an encounter where she had to worry about the flattering attentions of a gentleman? Now a part of her wished she had listened, perhaps there would have been something in her mama’s gentle advice that would help her in this moment.
Bafflingly, the duke seemed to have aroused her sensuality and she could not understand these complex feelings. Jules had always known it was there, but it had been more of a mild irritation and not this insistent urge to…to do what she did not know, and frustration surged through her veins in a fiery wave. She felt intrigued, unsettled, heated, and flushed. The weight of his stare, and the soft press of his thumb to her cheek filled her with aching want.
“Somehow going into your tree house feels…also dangerous.”
He smiled. “I believe one must challenge dangerous things to feel truly alive.”
It was instinct that prompted Jules to turn her head and nip the pad of his thumb before kissing the skin that she bruised with a tender brush of her mouth. She felt driven by something far more complex than mere desire. This wanting went beyond a physical need, and it scared Jules, for she had never dreamed it was possible to feel this way about anyone. What would it be like when they inevitably walked away from each other because they simply did not belong in each other’s world? Would she even miss his presence? Would dreams of kissing him still visit her sleep and rob her of proper rest?
He held out his hand and she took it, allowing him to take her up several more branches to the tree house. There was a large opening, and Jules stepped through it, her breath catching in wonder. The tree house smelt of pine trees which Jules assumed were what the unstripped logs it was made of had been. There were two large windows which were simple bare openings into the fresh air of the woods, and hinged to the openings were two pairs of shutters which were half closed against the night air. Through them Jules could see a few stars in the dark indigo of the night sky.
There was little in the way of furnishings, although there was a bed of sorts, covered by some shaggy dark fur. On the floor another cream-colored fur was spread over the bare boards. From its irregular shape Jules assumed it had once belonged to a bear of some kind.
One rustic wall had a built-in bookshelf filled with dozens of books. The only other furnishings were a small card table and a battered armchair. On the table was a small pile of books, a newspaper, some sheets of paper with a stone resting on top of them, an oil lamp and tinder box. There was no fireplace, but beside one corner was a small oil burner which would provide some warmth on a cold night. There was also a leather bag leaning against another wall, which Jules thought might contain wine or water.
She went and sat on one of the window ledges, peering out above several trees. They were a long distance from the ground and the view was simply breathtaking.
“So, wolves?” she murmured.
“Yes, wolves.”
“Would you tell me about it, James?”
James sat on the ledge of the other window, and they stared out into the lush beauty of the night for several minutes.
“Within a few days of being lost, I stumbled upon a small pup hanging from a high ledge on the side of a mountain. It was my first sign of life, and my desperate hunger led me to believe I only needed to get that pup and eat it. Raw if I had to.”
Arrested, Jules shifted, staring at his stark profile.
“Somehow I went down that mountain face, breaking my fingernails until they bled.”
James leaned against the window, lifting his face to the sky. “How I had survived to this point is a mystery. I was bitterly cold and had walked for days. The white around me was endless with no discernable direction in which to go, the wind’s brutal pounding against my skin cut into me like a poison-tipped knife. Wanting to lie down and sleep was a lure, but somehow, I knew it meant death, and I wanted to live.”
Jules closed her eyes, letting the smooth cadence of his voice take her to another place…to those ice-capped mountains and the stark, cruel beauty of them.
“I rescued the pup, but I could not eat it. Instead I bound its broken limb and continued walking with it. I passed out and when I came to, I was in a cave. The alpha had bit into my jacket, even breaking through to my flesh to drag me there.”
“That…my God, James, that is most incredible.”
