“It’s not passed from father to babe,” he said flatly, as if hearing her thoughts. His hand dropped away from her. “We’re born into lycanthropy. No one knows how or why it appears. Some might call it an aberration, but there’s nothing wrong or wicked about it. Yes, it makes life more challenging in certain ways, yet I see it as a gift.”
There was challenge in his eyes.
“I…” She swallowed. “I can see that.”
He didn’t smile, but the strain in the corners of his mouth eased.
“Are there female werewolves?”
“Male only. I cannot say why, but that is the way of it.”
She nodded, mulling this over.
In the silence, he turned his back to her. At first, she thought he didn’t care for her quiet, but then she realized he was giving her the privacy she’d requested.
She finished undressing. Gooseflesh danced across her skin as she stood, nude, upon the rocky bank of the creek. Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped into the water. The air seized in her lungs, stolen by the cold, yet she made herself wade deeper into the creek. Once she reached the middle of the stream, she hastily bathed, splashing water over all the places on her body that required attention.
Despite the cold, her cheeks warmed when she came to the telltale trails of Ezra’s seed dried on the inside of her thighs. It truly had been a remarkable amount. Her cheeks weren’t the only part of her growing hotter. Between her legs, her sex gave an answering throb of interest.
She glanced behind her. Ezra still had his back to her. Her gaze lingered on the breadth of his shoulders, and how the fabric of his frock coat pulled across them.
What if she…what if they…
She gave her head a hard shake and returned to her ablutions. Fucking him once was a distraction. The second time had been in the heat of a night that shifted all her understanding of what the world truly encompassed. But a third time, when she had a more level head, and in the midst of her own unraveling life…she couldn’t permit that. No matter how pleasurable it might be.
Finally, she was clean. Shivering, she waded out of the creek and hastily donned her clothing. The caraco fastened over her torn bodice, hiding the damage so that she appeared relatively respectable.
Stepping back into her shoes, she faced Ezra. “I’m ready.”
He turned around and crossed to her. They stood only a handspan apart, close enough for him to wrap a length of her hair around his fingers in a gentle hold.
“A beautiful color, like Baltic amber,” he murmured, looking at the strands. “And eyes the hue of forest soil after a rain.”
“My eyes are the color of dirt?” She raised a brow.
“Where’s your sense of poetry?” He smiled down at her.
“Hard to be poetic when you’ve no notion what the next few minutes of your life are going to look like, let alone the rest of your life.”
He chuckled, then lifted his nose into the air, inhaling. “Ah, Rhys caught us some breakfast, and Tej is cooking it. So that’s the next quarter of an hour accounted for.”
“Yet I have no idea what comes after that.”
Slowly, he unwound her hair from his fingers. “Tej, Rhys, and I, we have an appointment to make at midday. It still isn’t safe for you in the forest. So, I’d like you to come with us.”
“It doesn’t seem as though I have a choice.”
“Choice is always yours, my Lady Vixen. Forgiveness,” he said, with a hand on his heart and a shallow but courtly bow, “I meant, Jessica.”
She still liked how he said her name, rough and husky. It had always seemed like a mundane name, straight from Stepney, but in Ezra’s slight country accent, with that rasp in his voice, there was an almost elegance in it, tinged with sensuality.
He said her name in the way of someone who knew the taste of her cunt, and wanted more. The madness of it was, she was eager to provide it to him again.
That wasn’t possible. She needed all her faculties now, and laying with Ezra would certainly scatter all rationality.
Her stomach gave a growl. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.
“Breakfast first,” she said. “And then…if it is my choice…”
