Watcher by Holley Trent

CHAPTER SEVEN

“What’d you do with our new friends?”

Leticia’s plan hadn’t been to be sitting in the dark in a numb television trance when Jim arrived. She’d just gotten into one of those excitable moods where she couldn’t focus on anything else except the thing that would be happening many hours later. And the thing was Jim returning to Vegas, and them…coming to an understanding. She’d fully intended to get up and open the curtains but couldn’t compel herself to get off the edge of the bed.

Silently, Jim set his bag down near the door. He went into the bathroom.

He didn’t close the door, so Leticia drifted toward him.

She watched him scrub his hands and nails and dry them.

He tilted his head westward. “Got them in a room right across the hall. I was waiting for the deadbolt to click. Just heard it.”

“You can hear that?”

“Yeah.”

She got out of his way, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to rush out. In fact, he leaned against the counter and folded his arms over his chest.

Nervous, she rocked back on her heels. If there were a way for her to tap into the energy of that brazen, carefree, drunk-off-her-ass Leticia from their first night there, she would have partaken generously of it. She didn’t even know how to pick a fight. A fight would have been less awkward than standing there staring at him.

“I think they’ll be hard to track,” he said, gesturing across the hall again. “Allie’s got no bank accounts or credit cards. Her cell phone was one of those pre-paid deals. No social media or anything.”

“So, we go straight to Norseton from here?”

Jim nodded. “Can’t think of a good reason to obscure their travel path any more than we already have. Just need to make sure they understand not to get in front of any cameras once they get there. I started explaining it all to them, but their eyes started to glaze. I don’t make the best tour guide.”

“I’ll get them oriented.”

“Only if you’re not too busy earning your Bs.”

She had to laugh at that, and she’d needed that laugh to shake loose some of her apprehension. She hadn’t exactly been on her best behavior the last time they were together, and she’d been a little embarrassed when he’d dropped her off. When she’d tried to explain to Graciella the mess she’d made, her sister hadn’t been able to offer any empathy. She was always kind to her husband. Ashley had been listening in, though, and had leaned in between them to murmur, “Hello. That’s Wolf hormones yanking you around. Did you know Wolves have three that aren’t found in humans? Vic told me a little while ago that you smell like melancholy and Vegas misfortune. Sounds about right for a Wolf who got mate-locked under unusual circumstances. I probably smelled a lot worse when Vic and I were trying to fix our shit.”

Leticia hadn’t actually needed to know she smelled weird to some Wolves, but Ashley’s explanation made sense. Leticia was a mess because even without Jim biting her, he’d ignited changes in her. There was no way to predict how her kind of magic would behave when it interacted with his. All they could do was feel their way through things and hope they’d be able to have a good laugh at the end.

“This is the kind of group work I don’t mind,” Leticia said, bringing her thoughts back to the present.

“Good to know.” His wolf-tiredness had receded a little. His eyes were softer and lips less drawn. The shadow on his jaw had reemerged overnight. No longer smooth, but familiar.

Hewas becoming familiar, and familiar was an unexpectedly soothing place.

“What about the girl’s mother?” she asked before her thoughts, and gaze, could wander any further astray. She could probably stand all day on the edge of his ensnaring energy. She could almost taste it. Closing her eyes, she dragged her tongue across her lips and was convinced there was a new hint of spice there.

“Jesus,” Jim said in an undertone, and Leticia gathered herself quickly, realizing what she must have looked like.

“Your bonus Wolf’s mother, I mean,” she added, hoping to distract him from her extreme awkwardness. She’d never find out what he tasted like if she kept carrying on like that.

“Not a Wolf.”

“Oh.” Leticia hadn’t meant for the sound to come out sounding so bright. It was simply the best-case scenario for that child. If her mother’s ties to the pack were tenuous with her daughter gone, she could probably leave without quite so much production. “No connection to anyone important in the pack, then?”

Jim grimaced. “Not anymore. Michelle’s the kid. Her daddy was the last alpha. He died ten years ago, and there was no love lost between him and her mother. They weren’t together-together.”

Leticia was beginning to recognize the look Jim gave her when he was giving her time to catch up.

She waved him on with a laugh. “If I need you to slow down, I’ll tell you.”

“You sure?”

“No, but just pretend to believe the lie. Sometimes, I don’t mind feeling special. Other times, I hate it so much. I can’t tell you how to predict what I’ll need.”

Men like Jim weren’t used to smiling. That’s why when they did, it took longer for the shapes to fully be drawn on their faces. It took a moment more for the brightness to reach their eyes. “Is that how it’s gonna be?”

She shrugged bashfully. “Until I figure out some other way to be. Not used to having so many people in my business.”

“Same.”

Turning to face the door, she gnawed contemplatively on the hangnail that’d been plaguing her all day. “So…half the pack probably would be glad to see Michelle gone? The other half probably thinks they should keep an eye on her?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t imagine that guy, Chase, is going to put too much effort into hunting for his little brother.”

“Only as a means of locating Allie. Their brother Farris leaving wouldn’t be considered the worst thing. Remember, packs like that are always trying to cull a boy here or there when they can.”

“And Chase wouldn’t feel any kind of way about eliminating his brother as competition.”

“Yep.”

“I’m glad Norseton isn’t like that.”

“Me, too.”

Having chewed her cuticle bloody, Leticia turned back to him. “So, have you eaten, or—”

The remnant of her sentence disappeared into his mouth. Without her sensing him, he’d closed the distance between them and had been poised to strike.

Her catatonia quickly gave way to delight as her body melted into his embrace.

Apparently, they were done talking.

She had no idea what she was doing. Her body was an awkward pillar in the circle of his arms. She held her hands stiffly at her sides and craned her head up to reach his. But as he moved, she moved to fit against him.

More and more, she sought out his shapes and warmth. She chased his tongue when his retreated. She found his hands when they strayed too far from her core and inched them back where they’d started.

The tile threshold between the bathroom and foyer dug uncomfortably into her feet, but she didn’t want to back up. She didn’t want to signal that she wanted him to do anything but go faster.

All the same, he broke the lock on their mouths and breathed. “You sure this is what you want?”

She couldn’t reach him when he pulled back like that. She wasn’t tall enough, and his mouth was too far away. Naturally, she did what any reasonable Wolf would do, and she climbed him. Thigh to hip, thigh to hip. She locked her ankles behind his back and put her nose an inch from his.

“You gonna answer me?” he asked.

“I thought that was the answer,” she said.

“Was it? Because if I lay you on that bed in there—”

“Then what?”

He blinked.

He probably wasn’t used to people asking him to spell things out. That was what he was going to get from her, though. Forever and ever. Modestos were curious Wolves. They’d had to be because they’d never had brute force on their side. They had to think. Query. Understand.

“If you lay me on the bed, what’ll happen, Jim? Are you going to tuck me in?”

“I’m not gonna tuck you in. It’s my fucking birthday. I’m gonna wear you out.”

It was her turn to blink. Repeatedly.

He shifted his weight, which meant inching her a little lower in the process.

There was no concealing of the rock-hard protrusion sharing the space with her. It nestled beneath her rear end, so rigid it practically formed a shelf.

“Are you catching my meaning, Leticia?”

“I’m catching…something,” she said weakly.

“Yeah, I figured you would be.” How he managed not to sound cocky while saying that, she didn’t know. Probably, her permissiveness regarding his language had to do with the fact he’d pressed his lips against her neck and was hungrily kissing his way up it.

She whimpered as he dropped her lower onto him and kissed the underside of her back-tilted chin.

Her nipples were rioting against the silky fabric of her bra. Suddenly, all of her clothing felt tight and restrictive, and she wanted it all off.

Clumsily, she dove her hands down to her the bottom hem of her shirt and tried to pull, but there was too much of them in the way.

Jim staggered with her out of the doorway and toward the room. “Tish, hold on.”

She didn’t know if that meant to wait or to grip him tighter, so she did both. She squeezed her thighs against his waist and looped her arms around his neck until her back touched the bed. Then, nothing could stop her from ripping off her shirt and hooking her toes into his waistband. He was trying to drift backward, but she didn’t want him to move. She wanted to feel him.

She had no recollection of the first time he was bare for her. In her estimation, that meant it didn’t happen. She was going to treat the moment like it was her first time, and that meant she was going to help.

“Wait,” she whispered as she sat up. “I want to do it.”

“You gonna keep me waiting?”

“Maybe I will,” she said, even as she tugged his fly open and gripped his belt loops. “Maybe you haven’t finished telling me what’s going to happen.”

“I thought I told you.”

“You said you were going to wear me out. Are we going to arm wrestle?”

Jim’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Slowly, she wriggled his jeans past his hips.

Plain gray knit boxer briefs. She liked that color on him. That’s what she was thinking about as the tip of his cock peeked through the gap at the front. She was thinking about fabric colors and not how ruddy and dark that secret flesh appeared in its little niche.

“Are we…going to play board games?” she teased.

She still wanted an answer.

“You see any board games here?” he asked.

“No.” She skimmed her fingertips beneath his shirt and up his washboard abs, though. She had to force herself not to giggle. The fact she was in that predicament, being with him, touching him, would have never seemed possible to her even a week before. She was trying to grip that her life had indeed changed. After years at Norseton being thought of as someone’s sister, she was now someone’s wife, as well.

“Is something funny?”

There was nothing funny about the way Jim lifted his shirt over his head.

She wanted to feel all the muscles of his chest and shoulders as they flexed, but that curiosity could wait to be satisfied some other time. “Are you going to talk me to death? Is that how you’ll wear me out?”

“Darlin’, I don’t know that many words.”

Not that she cared. And she liked that she could still read his lips when they were against her neck the way they were.

He had the skin of her neck practically singing with pleasure.

She moved her hand reflexively to chase the line his lips had made, stretching out the enjoyment. Her imagination filled in the gaps. But she wanted more.

“What are you going to do then, Jim?”

He didn’t respond, at least not with words. After all, he had said he didn’t know enough of them. But he helped her loosen and remove the remnants of her clothes.

As she leaned back onto her elbows at the edge of the bed, he stared down at her, consuming her with a hungry gaze.

It took a tremendous feat of self-control for her to be still as her nerves needled inside of her.

He was used to having his clothes off, and he probably didn’t mind so much that her stares were indiscreet and overlong. But she wasn’t used to being looked at that way. She couldn’t guess what he must have been thinking.

“If things had gone according to plan a couple of nights ago…” he said, deploying to his knees in front of her.

“What are you doing down there?” she whispered because her breath was gone.

“I was going to tell you a story. A story about two nights ago.” One strong, callused hand cupped her knee. The other hand landed on her second leg. Slowly, he spread her thighs more to an almost uncomfortable angle.

She pressed her lips together tightly to stop her tongue from wagging. Her impatience and nervousness wouldn’t get in the way of advancement.

Please advance.

“If you’d stayed up, and if you’d been sober, this is what I would have done. Figured it was the next best thing to wedding cake.”

She almost didn’t catch that last part. His face was too close to the bed and her thighs, and the words had virtually disappeared into them. But her brain pieced them together right on time. He didn’t see the flaming of her cheeks or her wide-eyed shock because his mouth was against her, and his focus was downward.

At the first wet drag of his tongue down her crease, her body fell backward.

She’d either been electrocuted, or she had nerves at the juncture of her thighs that she hadn’t been aware of before.

She’d thought she’d discovered plenty of them. Being chaste didn’t mean she was disinterested in sex. It’d only meant that she’d never had a good enough opportunity to have it with someone else.

“Stay just like that,” he said against her parted flesh.

She could only whimper in response. He’d compared her to wedding cake. He’d intended to eat her, and she’d blacked out. Perhaps her brain thought it was doing her a favor. Perhaps she would have embarrassed herself somehow, but she still would have liked the chance to experience it on the night when connections should have mattered most.

Jim laced the tip of his tongue around her clit. Pulling the tender flap into his mouth, he moaned.

That made her moan—the vibration, the heat, his enjoyment of her. All combined, the facts of the matter made her squirm with yearning.

And then he added fingers to his exploration. The tips gently notched between her lower lips and pressed her open.

Instinctually, she lifted her hands to conceal herself, but his impatient growl corrected her movement. She lowered her arms to the bed.

“Not enough,” he said, raising his gaze to her.

There was a scold in his eyes, and it wasn’t the ire-triggering paternalistic sort. That wasn’t the sort of power she’d given him.

“Put them beneath you,” he demanded.

“My hands?”

“Beneath you.”

Perplexed, she snaked them beneath her back.

For another five seconds, he maintained that corrective stare, then he returned his focus to below.

She could hardly catch her breath, and he hadn’t even exerted himself, really. His mouth’s connection to her body was so scant and gentle that she shouldn’t have been dancing on the razor’s edge of desperation already.

Oh God.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation of her hands balling beneath her. Anything but his fingertips dancing near the rim of her hole and—

Did he just…

She lifted her head, and he was staring up her body with a crooked grin on his face and a dripping trail of moisture on his chin.

As though he’d heard the unspoken question anyway, he demonstrated for her that he’d done exactly what she thought she’d felt.

He was pooling his saliva in her crease. A finger pushed it into her. He backed that out and added more wetness.

“I’m not the kind of Wolf who’s gonna let my bride smash cake into my face and not eat it.”

She made that pitiful damn whimpering sound again.

With four fingers up their first knuckles inside her, he spread her open and then pushed in his tongue.

She was never eating cake again.

She was never going near it because whenever she saw those spongy layers and whipped frosting, she was going to remember Jim being buried neck-deep in her pussy, and she couldn’t go through life like that. A woman had to be able to move with some dignity and not have her legs give out beneath her when dessert was in the same room.

Her shoulder blades were trying to touch each other as her spine bowed and her body tried to bear down on him.

It was evident that his plan wasn’t to offer her a quick release. He’d said he was going to wear her out, and she hadn’t imagined he could manage that feat from his knees.

One of his thumbs started making a slow, methodical circle of pressure around her clit as he withdrew his tongue and experimentally pressed a thick column of fingers into her.

She didn’t mean to move. She didn’t intend to let her hands escape from beneath her, but she did, and he stopped.

Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes when she lifted her head. She was wound tighter than a pen spring, and her sex was quivering in front of him.

“I didn’t mean to,” she pleaded.

“Is that what you’re going to tell me when I’m inside you? Is that what you’re going to say when you make me come before I’m ready? That you didn’t mean to?”

“I…don’t know?” Her voice sounded feeble and airy, but she had no idea what she was supposed to say. All she knew was that his thumb had stopped mashing her button, and his fingers were easing ever farther away from her body. “I’m a living thing. I can’t help moving around.”

She was digging herself a hole, and she knew it because he’d knelt up and was peering down at her.

But she couldn’t hold the eye contact because his cock stirred in her lower periphery as he stood. A direct look revealed a wet spot in the gray fabric where the end of his shaft touched.

Putting his lips close to her right ear, he asked in a level, dominating tone, “You want to run that by me again?”

No, she absolutely did not.

She swallowed, put her hands back beneath her, and carefully repositioned her knees so they were spread as wide as where he’d put them earlier.

“Are you getting tired, darlin’? ’Cause in my experience, folks don’t follow instructions as well when they’re tired.”

“No,” she said weakly. “I’m not tired. And I don’t want to hear about your experience.”

“Why not?”

One day, when she had fangs, she was going to bite his furry ass until he howled for that. But for the moment, she was going to choose diplomacy.

“I only meant that a Wolf’s mate doesn’t want to hear about where he got his practice.”

She wasn’t confident that was a smirk on his lips as he retreated to his knees, but her body took that cocky expression as a warning anyway and prepared to the unpredictable.

She rocked her hips toward the sky when his lips closed around her clit. The pattern he tapped out against her flesh disrupted her body’s rhythms. He seemed to be spurring her heart on to beat faster and dismantled her ability to breathe deeply.

Her inhalations became increasingly shallower as he wet her again and teased her with long-reaching fingers. He spread and thrust them, filling her to the brink of capacity, and then somehow found room for more.

“Ah!” she cried out. Though her hands remained where he’d wanted them, she was only being still in the loosest definition of the word. Her knees had started to frenetically bounce, and her torso squirmed with every one of his forceful sucks.

When the first warning of orgasm lashed through her, she bolted upright. She may have been in a body that appeared human on the outside, but she wasn’t like most people. She was a Wolf, and that usually apathetic part of her was howling for relief. The wild animal was tired of being caged.

Jim must have seen the franticness in her eyes, or perhaps just read her desperation in her jerking, feverish movements, because he didn’t scold.

He freed her pleasure with an expertly placed palm heel against her sex. As he stood, he ground out her orgasm and her moans.

Although her body had been chasing that relief, the wolf part didn’t think Jim had done enough. She wanted flesh. She wanted heat. She wanted what she was owed by her mate and refused to be deprived any longer.

“Don’t let that animal get you trouble.” Jim laid kisses on her forehead, her cheek, her chin, and finally her mouth before pulling back.

“You can tell what she wants?”

“Yeah, I can tell now.”

Leticia’s head was a fog of lingering euphoria and carnal anticipation. She’d never been able to figure out what the wolf in her wanted or if she even wanted anything at all. But strangely, Leticia thought she could reach that wild part of him and see what his wolf wanted.

Jim’s wolf wasn’t easy to goad or anger. It was no wonder Jim was called Watcher because that was what that wolf energy in him did. It studied and learned. It liked to get things right.

Tugging his briefs down by the waistband, Jim said quietly, “Not biting you. Just so you know.”

Leticia knew. Despite her earlier hopes, the woman in her knew and understood. But the wolf didn’t like that. The wolf didn’t care what Leticia’s sisters had or hadn’t done. Whether or not they’d gotten bitten by their mates made no difference to her. That wolf wanted her bite. She wanted to be let out.

Leticia found that incredibly inconvenient.

“If I were ever to bite you, it wouldn’t be on the road,” he said. “Can’t be running around in your wolf body for the first time somewhere unfamiliar.”

The words were practical and businesslike. Woman-Leticia appreciated his thoughtfulness. Wolf-Leticia wanted her to close her legs and bar her mate further entry until he complied.

Shut up.

Leticia crept back on the bed until her head reached the pillows. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall to the left and opened her arms for him.

“Bare?”

She almost opened her eyes because the strain in his voice was unusual for him, but she didn’t.

She had to concentrate on squelching the wolf’s inner monologue. The wolf thought he should put on two condoms—three—so he couldn’t feel a damned thing.

Vengeful little bitch.

She knew that little bitch was a part of her. She was the hormonal trigger making Leticia smell like melancholy and misery to Vic, apparently. Leticia was going to have to find a way to quickly reconcile all the new and wayward thoughts in her consciousness.

But not right now.

“Bare,” she said.

Her nerves expanded in her throat, and she forced them down with a rough swallow.

“Bare,” she repeated because he hadn’t moved.

“You know what you’re risking?”

He did move then, but not to climb onto the foot of the bed. He was on the left side. His energy reached her before the gentle caress of his fingertips did.

He traced lazy lines down her throat and between her breasts. His warm palm lingered over her heart.

She put her hand over his and opened her eyes. She needed him to see that she was aware.

“I’m risking never being able to leave you alone,” she said.

Maybe the words didn’t make sense to him. His laugh came on a delay, but the wolf in him was satisfied by her response.

Her inner wolf remained wounded and skeptical.

“Well, that’s the risk of mating, I guess,” Jim said. “Wolves make a pitifully clingy bunch.” His other hand picked up the path where the other had left off and traced down to her belly button. “I meant the biological risks. Not the psychic and emotional ones.”

“I know what may happen.”

Leticia wasn’t worried about what sort of father Jim might have made. Even to the bitch inside her, it was evident that he would make a superior parent in either of his forms. By the time any offspring of theirs would be born, anyway, they’d already feel like they’d been together forever. That was the way it worked with magically bonded Wolves, and she couldn’t wait for the day where she woke up truly feeling her “forever” had already begun.

“Your wolf doesn’t want my pups.” He laughed again, and she did, too, because that sound on the rare occasion he made it was like being tickled by a feather. She couldn’t help herself.

“She’ll change her mind. I think she’s just…” It took Leticia a minute to think of a good word. Describing a part of her consciousness that had chosen that weekend to show her true colors was almost impossible. “Trying to have any sort of a say.”

“Well, tell her I prefer seasoning that’s heavier on the heat than the salt.”

That seemed to shut down the wolf’s indignation, probably more from shock than obedience. He’d made a joke.

Jim…joked.

Leticia loved that he joked.

And she loved that he was being so gentle positioning himself on the bed. He was careful to keep his weight off her breastbone as he climbed on. Her hand was still clutching his against her heart.

She looked up at him because that was her right, and she didn’t need to be scared to let him see she was curious.

She was curious. She liked him and desired him, and they could worry about the hairy logistics of everything else later when they were back in Norseton.

His palm never left her heart as he settled his body over hers and leaned in.

She had the only free hand, so tentatively, she reached between their bodies for him. Watching his face, she paused.

“Touch me,” he said, and he actually nuzzled his face against the crook of her neck.

Awww, no, don’t.

She frowned, because the Modesto instinct was to comfort and hug, and him doing such a soft thing made her snuggle reflex try to override her sex impulses.

“Touch me,” he repeated. “Or I won’t be able to angle myself.”

“Just…like this?”

There was a lot of his weight on her, and their hands were squeezed between their chests, but they could couple just like that. It’d be gentler that way.

“Just like this, darlin’.”

Swallowing thickly once more, she reached and found the firm, silky end of him. As she pointed him toward her sheath, she awarded herself what she hoped were discreet fondles. His was the only cock she’d ever held.

She’d have plenty of time later to explore his shapes and feels, though. The moment was for action, not reflection.

“Like this?”

“Just like that.” Jim tipped himself against her and waited at her doorway.

If he were awaiting an invitation, she was happy to give him one. “Come inside, please.”

“I’ll assume you mean that any way I take it.”

She didn’t know what he meant until he’d worked his way in and some of the fog of anticipation in her head lifted.

Oh.

Oh!

Apparently, she was allowed to have opinions about that kind of thing.

“If you want to.” Leticia was trying to sound mature and experienced, but there was a squeak in her voice. There was more of him he was still trying to work in, and what he’d already put inside her had dislodged her composure.

“I’ll want to.”

Blessedly, she didn’t have to talk anymore because he wanted to kiss her. She would never refuse one of his kisses, even when the sensations lower down were so overwhelming that her body compensated by shutting down her ability to hear.

She couldn’t make out a single word he was saying. Her scene of smell also seemingly shut itself down for the moment. Gone was Jim’s enticing soap-and-Wolf scent. She couldn’t see because she’d had to close her eyes to concentrate on kissing him back. She could still taste, though. The tang added to the exhilaration, knowing it was a secret taste between the two of them. And she could still feel. The feeling was nearly everything.

With every thrust into her, she felt like her energy expanded twice as large, but her body wasn’t growing with it.

With every thrust, her body clung more to his, tightening her hold on whatever she could hook around or into him.

Please don’t let me go, Jim.

With every thrust, his body informed her of his admiration, flattering moans and sighs out of her. He hungrily devoured them all.

He murmured something against her mouth. She couldn’t hear it, but she understood his request after a moment anyway.

Without letting go of her hand, he turned her onto her belly and hitched her bottom up high.

She was unconditioned for the maneuver, and her hips ached, and thighs wobbled, but she was ready when he pressed back into her.

Her shout into the mattress didn’t deter him, and it shouldn’t have. Her cry was one of pleasure and excitement, not pain.

She missed the kisses, but his carefulness made up for the loss of pleasure she’d felt with her mouth.

He was precise but forceful. Skillful but eager.

While she grew to a hundred, a thousand times what she’d been before, he still held on.

Even as she screamed.

Even as her body shook and convulsed.

Even as her sex tried to force him out because the sensation was too much, and she couldn’t breathe anymore.

As she came, and came, and came, he held her tight around the belly and pressed into her slowly, deeply, and assertively until there was wet heat and a searing flash through her.

She cried out, not from pleasure that time but from the sensation of being trampled.

Jim pulled away quickly and rolled her onto her side.

He grabbed her chin and briskly rubbed her back until she opened her eyes.

“Leticia?”

“That…hurt,” she whimpered, and she hated herself for the ball she felt compelled to curl herself into.

He let her take the shape, though, and sat at her back. He started rubbing again—her shoulder, arm, hip, and her thigh, as though trying to stir her circulation. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. I can hear you.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck that was. Obviously, it was me, or at least the wolf part. It’s never done that before.”

“The wolf part of you weighs two tons and just backed over me?”

“I don’t think it meant to do that. Can I…hold you?”

She wished he would. She’d barely completed half a nod before Jim spooned behind her, nestling the top of her head against his chin.

“I think you’re, no, it’s yelling at me,” she said.

She couldn’t really interpret what was going on inside her psyche, but apparently, Jim’s inner beast was having a “discourse” with the part of Leticia that was a naive brat. If there were a way for her to leave her body for the moment to allow them their privacy, she would have tried it.

Quickly enough, though, her ringside seat access ended. The part of Jim that had leaped from him retreated back into its usual space. Leticia felt more like her normal self, though a slightly inflated version. It might take some time to recover from being a host to that mob of wild energy.

Jim grunted. “Okay. Maybe let’s not bring that up outside of this room.”

“I take it that what just happened is something Wolves don’t do.”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Maybe it’s something your mother did, then. Living in Norseton, I’ve learned that no magic ever really rises from nothing. It always has an origin. Our mothers always have to hide so much, and we have to start asking them. Don’t we?”

He seemed to be considering that as he playfully wove her fingers between his in various configurations. “Maybe. I guess we’ll find out with our kids. See what they become when they don’t have to worry that being too interesting will get them sent away.”

“I hope they’re interesting.” I hope they’re as interesting as you.

“Yeah, darlin’.” Jim lifted his head just enough to kiss the side of hers. “They’ll fit right in with the rest of the Norseton weirdoes that way, won’t they? Way too interesting to ignore.”