I slipped the camo jacket around my shoulders. It smelled like about a thousand cigarettes and some sharp aftershave that nearly burned my nose. Still, I put it on anyway. It was probably good that it smelled so strongly, I reasoned with myself. It would cover any lingering trace of Jake’s scent on my skin.
“Are you ready to go?” Jake asked. He had found a towel to wrap around his own, lean waist. I knew the cold wouldn’t bother him, since he was a Were, but would it bother me? I hadn’t actually been knotted, but he had bred me a bunch of times. Also, my Heat Cycle had gone into the red—which meant I was still feeling pretty uncomfortably horny—or I would be later, once I’d had time to process everything. Did that make me a full-blown Were?
If it did, I’d better pretend otherwise, I told myself. If my mom and Jake’s dad realized that I was a full-blown Were, they’d put two and two together and it wouldn’t be good for either of us.
“The penalty for incest is death.” Jake’s words still rang in my head. I couldn’t believe that my mom would let anyone kill me because of something that wasn’t my fault, but I wasn’t so sure about my stepfather. Marcus was a stickler for obeying the rules—and making sure everyone else obeyed them too. Would he really try to kill me if he found out that Jake and I had slept together? And would my mom go along with it?
I wanted to say I was a hundred percent sure she wouldn’t—she was my mom, after all. But I couldn’t help feeling like I was only about ninety-nine percent sure. She and Marcus were so close they finished each other’s sentences at times—maybe they were “Fated Mates” as Jake had said. Speaking of that, hadn’t I heard him thinking of me as his Fated Mate during the altercation with Tainer and Sorenson? Had I really heard that or had I been imagining it? And what did it mean if I had heard it?
“Excuse me, Miss Wulven, but if you’d like to come this way, I’ll drive you and the Royal Heir home.”
The voice of the private who was taking Jake and me broke through my chaotic thoughts and I realized that it was time to go.
I took a last look around the attic. Someone had turned on the lights, so the moonlight no longer seemed so bright or overwhelming. I tried not to look at the mangled corpses in the corner or the bright red blood drying on the wooden floor. Instead, I looked at the rumpled bed where I had spent some of the worst…and best hours of my life.
For a moment I saw myself, lying on my back under Jake as he looked into my eyes, caressing my hair and murmuring softly to me as he took my virginity… I saw myself curled up with him, naked in the cold, drawing heat from his big, muscular body to survive… I saw myself riding him, my breasts swaying with every thrust as he filled me with his shaft and I cried out at the intense pleasure he gave me…
I saw all of it…and then locked it away in the back of my mind and told myself I must never think of it or speak of it ever again.
Because if I forgot and let those memories out…they might get me killed.
THIRTY-TWO
“Ani, dear—are you sure you don’t want anything else to eat? This rare roast beef the kitchen staff made is really amazing. And roast beef has always been your favorite.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I’m not very hungry tonight.” I tried to smile naturally at her across the table, but couldn’t quite manage it. These days I was almost never hungry. Not for food, anyway.
It was three weeks since we’d been rescued and we were all sitting down for a dinner like a normal family—only I felt anything but normal.
I still had considerable stinging where Jake’s shaft had torn me while he was taking me so hard, for one thing—it just didn’t seem to be healing—but that was the least of my worries. My breasts and nipples ached all the time. Also, my pussy felt swollen and hot and my clit seemed to throb between my legs like a second heartbeat.
I was pretty sure it was my Heat Cycle ramping up again. It had never been satisfied last time—I had never been knotted and now my body was letting me know it. I didn’t remember much of what my mom had tried to tell me about a female Were’s Heat Cycle, but I did remember her saying that it wasn’t like a period. It could come on any time of the month and it didn’t considerately wait four weeks to come again like a regular period either. It could come at any time and stay for any length of time and it generally didn’t go away until a female Were was knotted.