“You were only a man a month per year?” I ask.
“Yes, except when I was a small child.”
“And during those times…” His words about looking for a mate are rolling around in my head.
“I’d shift at night and hunt. Sleep and read during much of the day.”
“So, you mostly ate other animals?”
“Yes.”
I make a face. “Have you ever eaten a person?”
He considers my question a minute and flexes his jaw. “I remember once. Some of him. More than once, maybe, but once is vivid.”
I gag. He frowns.
“I disgust you?”
“You can’t help what you are any more than I can.” I shrug and slide my panties up my legs and try to get them on without dropping my towel. He watches with interest.
“You eat, what? Deer? Bunnies?”
“Yes.”
“You kill them and eat them?” My face heats.
“I don’t find dead ones and eat those. I’m not a buzzard shifter.”
“Bleck.”
“It’s natural, Ivy.”
“Let’s not talk about that stuff. Let’s just say you do ‘wolf’ things.”
“Okay,” he agrees.
“So you can read?” I ask.
“My uncle taught me, yes. He purchased textbooks and taught me from them until I could read well enough to take over and teach myself. He grew frustrated with the teaching and I was anxious for more learning, so I took over. I haven’t been a man for some time, Ivy. Some of the things I know are still coming back to me. Like the bananas. After you peeled it I remembered a book about a monkey who ate a lot of them and remember him opening the fruit to get the inside parts.” He gets a light in his eyes and then he’s gone.
He calls my name a few seconds later. I finish pulling a sweatshirt over my head and slide on a pair of loose short drawstring linen shorts I have in my bag.
I head out and see the door that was on the other end of the hall is open and a light is on. I step inside and this is a chilly room with a small bookshelf and a desk. There’s a twin mattress on the floor and everything in here is coated with dust. It smells like it hasn’t been opened up and cleaned in ages.
“This was my room, where I slept and did my studies as a child. The other room was his until I grew, and he gave it to me for bedding women and took this one.”
I lift my eyebrows and feel heat rise in my face. What’s that ugly feeling I have inside me?
“How many women have you brought here?” I ask, feeling my cheeks flame.
He ponders a moment. “Maybe six or eight, I think. Ten. Ten, yes.”
“You’ve had sex with ten women?”
“No, more than that. Many more than that. That’s just the ones I brought here. I often brought them to the motel or would go to their home.” He tilts his head. “Does this anger you?”
“No!” I answer too quickly. “Why would it? You bring me here; you bring plenty of women here. Were they here against their will, too?” I’ve got my arms across my chest and I fight my brows from knitting together.
He looks amused.
The asshole.
“They weren’t my mate, Ivy. I didn’t know it until now that I should’ve known the minute I was in their presence.”
I say nothing but heat continues rising in my face.
He chuckles and then hands me a dusty yellow book. “I loved this little monkey,” he says. “For a long time, this was my only book. I read it over and over.”
I feel a smile tug my grimace away. “I loved him, too.”
“You read this?”
I nod. “I think my mom still has it and all my other books. Boxes upon boxes of them in the attic. She’s saving them for some day when I have a baby.”
Tyson smiles wide. “Then our baby will have two of these books. Or one for our sons and another for our girls. We’ll have many boys so if shifter boys don’t like to share, they’ll have to learn.”
My heart skips a beat.
His expression drops and I realize it’s mirroring my expression.
“Or maybe we’ll need more copies of this book. I wanted siblings and didn’t have any, but I would not have wanted to share my books.”
“I should… uh… cook,” I say and make my exit.
20
Tyson
Her cheeks burned with jealousy as she asked how many women I’d brought here and tried to guess the number I’d had sex with.
This is good news.
The nurturing nature of my little one, her carefully shampooing my hair, protecting my eyes from soap, wanting to cook for me, it’s further proof she’s a gift to me.
More and more from books and lessons as well as experiences are sliding back into place in my mind. Uncle struggled to teach me the basics of reading and comprehension and I’m sure I learned later than I would have, but after I had the basics down he was relieved and told me the books would do the rest.