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Sterling put his hand into the bag. “Try them.”
That suggestion coming from the wolf who believed protein powder dumped on cereal and covered with unflavored, unsweetened oat or nut milk was a valid food choice. He’d picked these chips out, so this wasprobablya trap.
The combination of fish/spicy/artificial smoke and probably never-been-changed frying oil soaked into my sinuses and down my throat. It was vile, and yet oddly compelling. I risked another chip. Still vile. But edible.
Sterling took another chip. “They hurt, but that’s the charm. I knew you’d take to them.”
I paused, then flushed, especially between the thighs. Still had some chafe-marks on one wrist from the previous night. And a bite mark on my shoulder. I reached for my jalapeño-lime-lemonade monstrosity slush drink while giving his crotch the side-eye. “Mmmph.”
He glanced at me.
I wrapped my lips around the giant red straw and tried to look innocent.
He shook his head, his amused, adoring scent filling the cab. Along with the scent of slush and crawdad powder.
I consulted our fold-out paper map. More or less, the highway system drew a simple box around the Everglades, and like in Alaska, there was a point at which the roads just stopped. So the plan was to more or less drive a circuit and hit the various hamlets and outposts or whatever other structures we found along the way, trusting that we weren’t supposed to go too far into the swamp.
“There’s nothing out this way, is there,” I said. Even the highway didn’t have bends in it. Just a straight, flat shot through endless low-lying marshygreenand scrub trees, and occasionally there was an exit or a bridge, and under it ran a white-sand road that lead deep into the jungle-like foliage. I’d never seen anything like it. Orfeltanything like the instant, muggy air that sank into my skin like a blanket and the bugs that instantly swarmed for a taste of flesh and sweat.
“I wish you would tell me about it,” Sterling said after we’d been rolling along in companionable silence a bit.
“About what?” I asked.
“Life at the house.”
I dipped my hand up and down through the muggy, hot air on the remote highway, heading out further and further into the marsh. “What do you expect it will be like? I’m a new wolf in a strange, large, very established pack. That was always going to be tense, even if it wasn’tthis.”
“Is he kind to you?”
I sighed. “Sterling, come on, I’m not going to torture or distract you. Things in the house are tense. The senior wolves have, I think, realized everyone is inway, way,wayover their heads while also being desperate to not splash too loudly while they drown. I, being very well used to such a feeling, paddle along as I always have.” I gestured to the highway in front of us. “Case in point. Here I am. What am I now? A Dream-Harrier?”
“So you are paddling along?” Meaning hung from his tone.
“I gave you my promise, didn’t I? Are you afraid I’m going to go too far? Or not far enough?”
He reached across the console and took my hand. “No. I meant what I said in Seattle.”
Something unpleasant hung in the air, and it wasn’t the smell of those chips or the swamp outside. “That sounds like second thoughts.”
He kept his hazel gaze on the beaten-up road in front of us. “I hate the idea that I gave you to a life you won’t ever find any happiness in. I know you don’t even want a tropical island paradise.”
I didn’t, really. The designs for the island were exquisite… and rather fortified.
“I was hoping Searle would be compassionate,” Sterling said.
A throb through my crotch like the vise of Searle’s hand. I blocked it before the memory of his fingers folding my labia inside me came along with it. “He’s very jealous. But he’s also salty about the fact that I’m an Apprentice and know things he’s not allowed to know.”
“He sounds controlling.”
“Typical First Beta.”
He squeezed my hand, feeling the way my fingers twitched against his palm. “I want you to be safe and happy. I also want you with me.”
“You’re jealous?” I asked.
“Possessive. Jealous.”
He better get over it. I tried to pull my hand away. “It’s too late for that.”
