“There’s something in your loft, Gruff.”
“I know. Don’t worry. Nothing hostile. She’s more scared of you than, well… I don’t know if that’s true. Fear doesn’t seem to factor into many of her decisions. Jem. You can come down.”
I’m not sure if I want to come down. I’m not sure how I will react to them, or how they will react to me. I don’t trust myself around these creatures. I don’t believe I know how to act morally, or properly, or like anything other than one of the courtesans they were just talking about. I can feel that familiar wetness between my thighs.
“Jem,” Gruff says. “Come down.”
“I don’t want to come down.”
“Sorry,” he says. “She’s disobedient. And new. And”—he raises his voice to make sure I hear the threat—“about to be punished for disobedience.”
“Over your fucking dead body, buddy.”
This started off as a hiding place, now it’s more like a grassy siege. I’m not going down there. I don’t care what the threats are. I don’t care what the stakes are. I’m not going down there. Up here, I’m above them all. Down there I’m going to feel like one small girl surrounded by hulking, horned aliens. I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself. I don’t know if they will control themselves.
The stairs to the hayloft creak as Gruff comes up them. “What are you doing?” He growls the question softly at me as I peer out at him from an impromptu hay costume I have just made for myself.
“I don’t want to go down there,” I whisper back. “They’re scary.”
“You have nothing to fear from them. They are civilized.”
“They were just talking about prostitutes.”
“That does not apply to you.”
I find that less than reassuring. These males are desperate for females. They are open about it, and I can smell it on them. The musk is filling the room. It is infecting me. It is making me hot in ways I shouldn’t be hot.
“I can smell them,” I whisper.
His gaze becomes knowing. “I see.”
“She’s very sensitive to buck musk,” he explains, loudly.
“Oh my god, Gruff, shut up!” He won’t understand any of those Earthly anachronisms, but they leap to my tongue unbidden. I am so embarrassed. He’s making me sound like some kind of alien nympho.
“Come down and behave yourself,” he says. “Nobody will touch you. Even if you want them to.”
“I don’t want…”
“Stop it, Jem. There is no shame in being a lustful girl in season.”
“I’m not!”
“Then come down and stop lurking in the hay. We have guests. You need to be the hostess.”
“I’m not the hostess type, Gruff.”
“Come down off there. Now.”
I refuse again. He reaches out, grabs the back of my uniform and pulls me bodily out of the hayloft. I grip the edge of the overhang and refuse to move any further. It’s a precarious position, and one that clearly does not please him. He wanted to show me off, but if that’s what he wanted, he should have prepared me better. Or maybe he should just have listened in the first place when I said I didn’t want to meet them. Gruff has a way of getting what he wants, but that’s what makes us a good match — because I have a way of doing what I want anyway.
He pulls me down off the rack, climbing down behind me so he can catch me when he makes me let go. I fall from the rack into his arms and that is how I meet his friends, sprawled in his grip.
The sons of Piam are strong and handsome, with a range of coloration in their light pelts from black and white to a caramel brown. Their eyes are golden in hue.
“Who is this?” Piam asks the question.
“This is Jem,” Gruff says. “She is my mate.”