Page 36 of Pulled By the Tail
“If that certain vantage is a misogynistic notion that women are property, then you can go fuck yourself.”
He laughed, the burst of amusement echoing off the stone walls. “I do like you.”
Talen
Curious kits should not complainwhen they find themselves in endless trouble. That is the price of curiosity.
-Persistence and the Secret of the Shadowed Hill
Georgia tookthe chaos of running the house and shaped it into order. He showed her the household accounts, vendors and invoices, upcoming bookings. The disorganized pile of unpaid invoices frustrated and shamed him. He had no idea they had not paid their bills. When they ran cargo—which felt like a lifetime ago, not merely a year—shippers were also trying to screw them out of paying the bill. He knew exactly how frustrating it felt not to be paid for his labor and he hated that he inadvertently did just that.
Fiona was meant to help with the business end to free up his time for the very necessary renovations, but the female couldn’t be bothered, it appeared. Talen knew that if he asked her to explain herself, she’d either claim she was bored or burst into tears. He never knew what to expect with his brother’s mate.
Happily, Georgia seemed undaunted by the mess. She asked relevant questions, often wanting very explicit details, but she never asked the same question twice. She made notes, organized the invoices by most-urgent to least.
Georgia gazed out the window, a mug of coffee in hand, as the morning light pooled around her. A light layer of snow fell overnight, dusting the ground, and the sunlight seemed brighter as it reflected off the immaculate surface. What struck him was how obviously she belonged there, at ease in the quiet of the morning, before the hectic rush of the day. Ideally, she’d be sipping tea in his bedroom, wearing nothing, perhaps a blanket wrapped just so to expose her back and the fabric would gather just above the luscious curve of her ass—
Talen adjusted himself. She affected him. He hardly knew her, but his body craved her, which was a new experience for him, having always needed an emotional connection before he felt physical attraction. He couldn’t explain the greedy way his eyes drank in her form, loving every curve and the thickness of her hips and thighs. She was built for a male like him. More than that, the way she lifted her stubborn chin and looked him in the eyes, unafraid. He stood a head taller than her, outweighed her with muscle mass, had claws and fangs that could shred her thin human skin, but she never held her sharp tongue and told him what she thought of him, which wasn’t much.
He knew hardly anything about Georgia Phillips, but he wanted to know everything.
“Good morning. May the day bring you good fortune,” he said. She muttered a reply. “That was barely comprehensible. Is that your first cup of coffee?”
“Oh, fuck off,” she grumbled.
“As I suspected. I will refrain from conversation until you are sufficiently caffeinated.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, which he found endearing beyond explanation, and drained the mug. He paid handsomely for the coffee, which she assured him was vital to her health, and it pleased the feral part of his brain that wanted to feed and provide for his mate.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Fiona’s having a meltdown about not getting an invitation to some party. Or maybe she did but has nothing to wear. I wasn’t really listening. All I know is you don’t want to be in the kitchen right now.”
He agreed. They could eat in town if hungry. “Dress warmly today. We’re going to the market.”
The bookseller only made it to Drac’s open-air market once every two months. He could download digital books to read, and did, but he enjoyed the tactile feel of a paper book.
The bookseller’s stall overflowed with tables and boxes of treasure. His heart sped up at the sight.
“Are we looking for anything in particular?” Georgia crouched down to examine a box filled with mystery novels. She thumbed through the copies, not pausing to read the blurb.
His tail twitched with irritation. “Do you not like books?”
“I like reading. I just never felt the need to clutter up my space with books. Seems inefficient when I can have thousands of books on a single device.” Her words hurt him. Caused actual, physical pain.
“So, you’re not perfect after all,” he said with a dramatic sigh.
The look she tossed him stole his breath, her keen green eyes glimmering in the sunlight. “You thought I was perfect?”
“I’m looking to build a collection for the library,” he said, sidestepping the question. “A casual mix of genres, I think, for the guests to enjoy.” Not to mention the history volumes he asked the bookseller to track down, and a few more specialized titles.
She browsed the tables but never picked up a book. The behavior puzzled him and then he realized. “You don’t read Corravian?”
A pink flush spread across her face.
Apparently not.
He looked at the tables, noticing for the first time that most of the books were written in Corravian, followed by Tal and Fremmian. He could speak and read in all three languages, but he had traveled extensively as a youth, an age that made language acquisition easier.
