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And the faint, nagging urge to mate intensified again.
Enough,I told my Wulfaen.We must be patient.
But the beast in me didn’t understand the need to be patient.
My Wulfaen had been tolerant for many moons and was done with waiting. The deep-rooted, primal, lustful part of me waged a war inside and had my hands flexed, wanting to reach for her every time she was near me. I wanted to make excuses to touch and be close to my Sheleki. To breathe in her sweet, heady scent and learn what her luscious lips tasted like.
But I knew better than to force such things even if that had been in my nature.
The last thing I wanted was for Amara to see me as just another alien who meant to take from her. Another male stranger who did not care at all about what she desired. If I pushed her, that would kill any desire she had for me for good, and then I would have to live with myself without her.
Every time I saw that little spark of interest in her eye, that considering look, as if she was testing the weight of her own interest, I felt my body respond, my staff harden and my heart race.
I found her a bathing pool in a sheltered glen, opting to keep watch for danger instead of bathing with her. She would have noticed my arousal right away if we had bathed together. I didn’t have the energy for an embarrassing conversation about my hard staff after our recent battle.
Once we were both clean and dressed again, we got back on the road for a while before the lowering sun forced me to look for a place to camp. I was footsore by then, and even Chaser looked weary. Amara was dozing in the saddle by the time we finally stopped.
“Setting up camp for the night?” She sighed, straightening as I led Chaser to the small bower bush stand I had found. Its thorns would shelter us from wildlife, and its spreading leaves would shield us from the rain that I could smell coming.
“Yes,” I replied. “Stay there. I will help you down.” I kept half an eye on her as I unloaded the bedroll and set it inside the glade.
“I can walk on my o…” An enormous yawn interrupted her sentence. “Shit. Okay.”
I fought a smile as I came back to help her down. Maybe I was making another excuse to put my hands on her. But I wanted to see that gleam in her eye again so badly that I was barely concerned.
Besides, she really looked ready to fall out of the saddle.
I helped her down with two hands while untying one of the groundrunners with the other. “You must try to stay awake long enough to eat,” I whispered, not quite able to hide a catch in my voice when she leaned on me. “You will heal faster if you do not go hungry.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” she mumbled as we moved toward the bower together. “You don’t have to fuss.”
“Yes, I do,” I mumbled. “I won’t have my Sheleki suffering anymore if I can help it.”
“Humph.” But she was smiling a little as she settled down. “Well, I don’t mind being spoiled a little, but I’m really used to pulling my own weight.”
“I will not discourage you from doing so. I simply wish to add my strength to yours. In a proper mating, we look after each other.” I would soon have to gather stones for a firepit, but for now I wanted her in the bower’s shelter and comfortable before I sought them out.
I stepped outside the bower to pluck and gut the bird. The sun was finally setting after a long day of travel. A chill had already crept into the breeze.
“I’ve had way too much experience with guys who were selfish,” she said. “Or who cheated.”
“Cheated?” I stripped the bird of its inedible parts quickly, wrapping them in its tough skin and tossing the offal as far outside the camp as I could.
“Men sleep around.”
The last phrase didn’t translate correctly, and I stood there blinking for a moment before realizing it must have been a metaphor for sexual disloyalty. “I thought humans were monogamous.”
“It actually varies a lot. But the problem comes when someone pretends to be monogamous and then isn’t.” I heard the rustling of her taking off her shoes and foot wraps. “Ow. Okay, this is healing, but I can’t do some of my stretches yet.”
“Be careful.” I found a straight green branch to carve into a skewer and started sharpening one end. “Your Earth male cheated on you?”
“Yes.”
My eyes widened, and for a few moments I couldn’t speak. Gladiators spent their whole life hoping to find their mate, and Earth males took their females for granted.
“That Earth male didn’t deserve you.” My eyes locked with hers. “I would never rut with another female. I need no other but you because you, Sheleki, are my world. My fated mate.”
“Humans don’t normally have soul mates,” she replied. “We fall in love and try to make our lives together work, but it may not last. We may even want it to, and things just go wrong. But when it falls apart, one person is committed and the other either barely is or isn’t at all. And usually they lie about it.” She didn’t sound bitter, just exhausted and regretful.
