Page 28 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

A little rest time is needed, as we rise from the bath and towel each other off, but as I’m toweling him off, while still naked, rubbing the towel over him, my breasts bouncing with the motion, there’s a response, a spark in his eyes and a twitch of his cock. And so I decide to experiment, not hungrily, as I had earlier when he was more than ready, but slowly, taking my time, sucking until he is rock hard. At that point, I fully intend to finish him then and there, but he has his second wind, and by the end of it, we’re in bed, both fully exhausted and dropping into a deep and satisfied slumber.

There’s one thing we did not do. It’s now three nights past my wedding and I’m still a virgin. Even before Bishop, I was not a virgin by choice. I always grumbled about being unable to find a man willing to do more than kiss me without a wedding band, but the truth is that I just didn’t try very hard. It wasn’t as if I’d met anyone that I actively tried to take as a lover. It was more an amorphous longing that grew into a frustration, not because I couldn’t find some unnamed man to bed but because I couldn’t find one I wanted to bed.

Now I have—and I’m legally married to him—but I’m still a virgin because, to Bishop, as long as we haven’t consummated the marriage, I’m not bound by it. I won’t point out that after three nights, no magistrate is going to grant an annulment. Any nonsense about checking for a hymen is just that: nonsense.

No, this is about choice. My father gave me to Bishop because he wanted heirs. Beryl Levine is also looking for a legacy, and my womb is where she’ll find it. Even that lone wolf, Lynch, counseled Bishop to plant his seed before handing me over, to gain future leverage with the Levine Cabal.

If everyone sees procreation as my sole purpose in life, then Bishop is going to be very careful about the act that fulfills it. Part of that will be obtaining precautions against pregnancy, but part of it, too, is that crossing that line means I will be “properly” married, when I did not choose that.

I certainly can imagine staying with him. What I need is to reach the place where I can’t imagine anything else, where the thought of leaving brings not just a hollowness in my soul, but the utter carving-out of it. I need to know beyond doubt that this is my place, and I need to know beyond doubt that it’s where he wants me to be, not just today and tomorrow, but the next year and the next and the next.

We aren’t quite there yet. And so, if he considers it respectful to refrain from consummating our marriage, then I accept that it’s what he needs and maybe, if I’m being honest, what I need as well. What matters is that he wants to consummate it. I make it clear I want that, too—that I am desperate for him.

“All right,” he says afterward, as he pulls me, still quivering, over to him. “What do you want to ask me?”

“About school.”

One brow lifts. “Is that a euphemism?”

I smile. “No, though I suppose it could be, if that part of your education came in a brothel, but I mean actual school. I’m hardly going to ask about brothels when I’m too sated to enjoy the conversation.”

A wolf’s grin. “If you will enjoy the conversation, then I certainly want you to do that.” He adjusts me in his arms. “So, for now, school?”

“Your early life. Your education. I was thinking earlier that I don’t know much about it. You obviously are educated…”

“Perhaps not as much as you might think. Do you wish the short version or the lengthy one?”

I cuddle into his chest. “The longest possible one.”

He glances down, as if to be sure I mean it. “All right then. Well, Pack wolves are informally educated, with what you would consider amateur tutors, wolves with a talent for teaching. It makes sense when they’re young and sending them to a village school runs the risk of a child saying more than they should. But I would like to see an opportunity, as desired, for formal education at higher levels, once they are old enough to keep Pack life a secret. Like most wolves, my grandfather only had the basics, which means he could read and do basic mathematics. Both his sons received more, having more aptitude, until they left the Pack, and their education ended.”

He looks at me. “Do you still want the lengthy version?”

“All of it,” I say. “Consider me a sponge in need of water.”

He kisses my forehead. “Stop me if it becomes too much.”

“It won’t.”

“When Montague was exiled from the Pack, he needed employment and lacked the education or the aptitude for anything cerebral in nature. He took the job most common among non-Pack wolves—they use their strength to hire themselves out as muscle. Other supernaturals seek werewolves for that, but many—like Montague—prefer to work for humans, where they don’t need to exert themselves to succeed. Montague did very well for himself, but the man cannot keep a penny in his pocket.”

“I did notice that Julius and Nancy snuck out to retrieve your funds.”

“Thank the gods for Nancy. She guards the portion we keep at the cottage, but she also knows better than to let Montague discover it. Fortunately, my grandfather is accustomed to having others manage his money, and all he cares about is that his needs are met.”

“Because he was a Pack wolf.”

“Yes, and my father and uncle took advantage of that once they were old enough. After they left the Pack, they lived a very different lifestyle, with a father who would treat them to a feast one day and leave them shivering outside a tavern the next. They started making their own money as soon as they could. My uncle had a mind for business and my father had a gift for innovation, so between the two of them, they came up with a way to refine Montague’s business plan. Or, I should say, to create an actual business plan.”

Bishop reaches for the night table, where we’d left two half-finished glasses of wine. He hands me one and sips his own before continuing.

“My father was an excellent mimic, and he knew how to behave and sound like a well-to-do gentleman. He reasoned that men of wealth and discernment didn’t want to hire ruffians, even for ruffian work. They wanted someone who could pass in their circles. My father and uncle established a business providing bullyboys who looked like gentlemen. They could pull off the gentleman charade … and my grandfather could be given the jobs that required less finesse. They also expanded their business to include finding missing people, which a werewolf can do well, and when the coffers began to fill, they invested wisely. Then they each had a son, and they decided they didn’t want Julius and me to merely emulate men of breeding. They wanted us to be men of breeding, as best we could.”

“Hence the fact you both speak like gentlemen.”

“Yes, it’s not an affectation. Part of their plan included giving us the best education they could afford. We even went to a boarding school, though that was a bit of a conceit when our fathers secretly lived a few miles away. Werewolves are indeed pack animals, and they’d have been as miserable without us as we’d have been without them. But we attended boarding school for a few years and then continued our educations until…”

He clears his throat. “Until their deaths. After that, while there was plenty of money to continue our schooling, I had no stomach for it. My father had hoped I’d study the law, but I was never interested. I wanted to be an Alpha, and I was more than happy to carry on the family business while Julius attended medical college. So, if you were hoping for a husband with a degree to his name or a respectable job…”