Page 220 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"I've been thinking about it," she continues, her voice calm and steady. It's the tone she has when she's already worked something out and is just waiting for everyone else to catch up. "If the others mark me first, here…" She touches the spot on her shoulder where Thane's fresh mark gleams. "The scar tissue will build up. Layer over layer. The skin will be tougher. It won't hurt as much."

I blink at her.

She's planned this.

And the plan includes me, somehow.

I could still hurt you. My bite is not like theirs.

"I know." She smiles. "I want it anyway. Even if it hurts, Misha."

All I can do in response is stare.

She presses her forehead against mine, her lashes fluttering shut.

I close my eyes, too.

For a few seconds, I just breathe in her honeyed scent and the woodier scent beneath it now, proof that she's claimed and loved and protected by my brother.

In that sense, we are bonded.

Because even with her plan… what if it's not enough? What if my teeth go through all of it anyway?

I push it out of my head for now. There's fuck all I can do about it tonight. There's something else we need to discuss anyway.

I can't take you out on a date like the others are planning to, I sign when I pull back finally, my shoulders sagging. We can't even go to a restaurant without there being a fucking scene.

I'm signing faster and more complex than usual, and for a second, I'm worried she didn't catch all that. She's hesitating, eyes slightly narrow, processing. Filling in the signs she doesn't know, maybe.

She nods in understanding, then shrugs. "I don't care if there's a scene. Whiskey makes plenty of scenes. It isn't like I need to be stealthy anymore."

Not the fun kind of scene, I add. The kind of scene where I get thrown out.

"Then I'll go so nuclear on Yelp, they'll beg us to come back. Trust me. I've done it before and I'll do it again."

I look doubtfully at her.

"But we could always have a date here," she says, gesturing at the loft around us. "Just us. And you can mark me right here in the loft."

The growl that rumbles in my chest is even more doubtful.

"Or the tunnels," she adds, nudging me with her knee. "For nostalgia."

That makes me laugh. Sort of. It's one of those freakish huffing growl noises I make that she seems to like for some reason, and she's already beaming because she's insane. My shoulders shake once and I press my face into her scar and my brother's fresh mark, breathing her in, her fingers in my hair and lightly scraping against my scalp.

She deserves more than a fucking tunnel or a loft.

She deserves the moon.

I just need to figure out how.

Chapter 46

Whiskey

Hogzilla's back from the fuckin' dead.

She's uglier than she was, sure. The left fairing is a slightly different shade of red, and the chrome on the exhaust pipes has a few new scars that won't buff out no matter how much I work 'em.