Page 27 of Feral Werewolves
“Kestrel,” she said breathily, stopping right in front of me. She bit down on her bottom lip, unconsciously seductive, or was she doing that on purpose? “That’s who you are, right?”
Paladin told her my name. Like I was supposed to be impressed that she knew me? I folded my arms over my chest.
She dragged her toe on the ground, gazing up at me from behind her lashes. Oh, fuck, thatwasdeliberate. “Hey. I’m Clementine.”
“You told us that before.” Wow, my voice was going to sound like that, huh? All choked and affected and scoured. Shit.
“Yeah.” She laughed a little. She dropped her gaze.
Paladin stepped behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She glanced at him and then back at me.
“Take her back,” I said to him. “What the fuck, Paladin?”
I started to step around them. I was going to go right back into the house and pretend she wasn’t there.
She stepped into my path, and Paladin’s hand on her shoulder fell away. She looked into my eyes, searching my expression for something.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
She dragged her teeth over her lower lip nervously back and forth, and I honed in on that lip of hers.
“Seems like maybe you came out here because it wasn’t enough for you at the full moon,” I said. “Seems like maybe you’re some kind of sexual deviant who wants to be degraded and used. That it?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
I let out a caustic laugh. When I tried to walk around her this time, she let me.
“It was my first time,” she called after me. “So, I guess I don’t really know what I like.”
I halted. So. That was weird. I’d never… I mean, I doubted that any woman I’d ever had sex with had been a virgin, and I didn’t think I even cared about shit like that, except that I liked that. And that feeling of protectiveness, it surged. And she felt… like mine. Or ours. Or…? Fuck me.
“Seriously?” Paladin was whispering to her.
“I know, it was crazy, but I don’t regret it. I’m kind of glad. It was intense, but most women seem to really have awful experiences losing their virginity, and I had more orgasms than I’ve had in my life. I think maybe I got the better deal in the end.”
I turned around to look at them. I stalked back. “You trying to move in? That it?”
“No, she’s getting a degree,” said Paladin. “She wants to be a lawyer. She doesn’t want this at all. She even says she doesn’t believe in the mating bonds. Like you.”
I looked her up and down. “You don’t even know what it’s like out here, Clementine.”
“I mean, I might,” she said. “I watched a few of thosedocumentaries, like the ones where they were trying to infiltrate the various factions who are all doing raids on each other for food and resources. There’s probably some group here that functions like werewolf mafia or something. Hoards things. Demands you guys give them things to keep them from killing you, like food.”
She was smart, then. “Like women,” I said. “You come here, and try to move in, they will take you. And you don’t want to be someplace like that, trust me.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly unsettled by this.
“I’m sorry,” said Paladin. “Like I said, it was selfish of me—”
“Well, I don’t want to move in,” she said. “So, I could just come by sometimes, maybe. Until, um, it wears off in six months?”
“Come by?” I said. “For what?”
“To hang,” she said. “Like we go on dates. Or, um, just…” She blushed. “To fuck.”
“That’s what you want,” I said. “That’s why you’re here, after all.”
