Page 32 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Nine

Brutus gulped, dripping blood into the undergrowth, but still refusing to give up entirely. “I’m the one—”

Aidan’s eyes flared gold. “I’ve already claimed her.”

Brutus glowered. Lorcan whistled through his teeth. The blonde woman took a step closer, but only one. “Brutus, you know the laws.”

Aidan did not look at Sorcha, did not take his piercing gaze from Brutus, even as he put out his hand to help her up. He gripped her chin in a way that looked hard, demanding, only his fingertips were soft on her skin, barely there. He tilted her head, exposing the place he had bitten her. “My mark.”

The blonde woman’s nostrils flared and she nodded once, sharply. “Are you challenging?” she asked Brutus.

He was wider than Aidan, and Sorcha would have said the proper, bespectacled museum curator she thought she knew might not be a match for such violence.

But this Aidan? The one with the gold eyes and the spiral tattoos swirling up the entirety of his left arm? She did not know this man. But she had seen him take on an ogre. Brutus was not much of a challenge after that.

Brutus, apparently, agreed. He was muttering, but he stepped back, dropping his gaze. Sorcha took that to mean that he was not going to challenge Aidan’s claim on her. She did not know how she felt about that.

Sorcha might not be alone anymore, but she was still bound and barefoot in a camp of wolves. With the Earl of Coventry.

It was rather a lot to process all at once. The claiming and the deep, feral way he spoke it. The way it made her feel, even as she tried not to feel any which way about it.

The fact that Aidan Carnahan wore the wolf.

Not just any wolf, but the gray wolf who had saved her from the ogre.

Aidan had been at the Cauldron. Why? How? She refused to believe he had been there for the entertainment. And she had no way of knowing if he’d realized it was her he had saved. The spells on her red cloak were very, very effective.

And if he did know it was her…that would change nothing, would it? How exactly did one bring that up in conversation? Good afternoon, mind the blood, thanks very much for saving me from becoming an ogre’s supper.

And besides all of that, there was the undeniable fact that Aidan was still naked.

It was very distracting. All those muscles. The soft pelt of hair on his chest. The bare backside tanned from the sun. The warmth and strength of him.

And had she mentioned the absolute, stark nakedness of him?

It was difficult not to be distracted, even considering the very imminent possibility of being torn limb from limb.

Get yourself sorted, Sorcha Beauregard. This was hardly the first backside she had ever seen. She’d also seen danger. Violence. Peril.

Muscular buttocks.

And then Aidan turned to face her. Still naked. His eyes still held that particular gold shimmer of his wolf.

“Um,” Sorcha said. Very eloquent. Her old governess would be deeply disappointed. Not to mention her grandmother. Sorcha knew how to embroider and which fork to use at supper and how to steer awkward situations into soothingly dull conversations about the weather, the theatre, someone’s new rose garden.

But as far as awkward situations went, this was a new one.

And she had once spelled the shoes of a viscount who did not take no for an answer to propel him into the nearest fountain. With a punch bowl on his head.

Twice.

Mayfair and Haven had a lot in common. The proximity of the Serpentine and the sea, for one. And entitled, drunken young lords for another. But she was getting distracted. That had been several years ago. And this particular earl was not particularly young, nor was he entitled. Or drunk. He would not be distracted by a punch bowl tipped over his head.

And nor would she.

A dozen questions pressed against her teeth, but before she could blurt them out, he touched her cheek, so briefly she might have imagined it. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She was a bit bruised and knocked about, and her wrists were red, but she’d had worse when Nimue was in a mood.