I didn’t like the casual shift in her demeanor. It was an act, and I knew it because her heart was beating hard enough to hear it across the room.
Picking her up and dumping her out on the lawn would be the easiest way to get rid of her. But fuck me, I was curious to know what she was up to.
“You’re a werewolf,” she said with a shrug. “You’re into guns and booze and flirting with your food only to mount their heads on your walls amongst the other innocent creatures in your collection. Books don’t exactly fit that aesthetic.”
“Pretty spot on for the rest of my pack. I’m a little different.”
“What? Is this like the ‘I’m not like other girls’ trope?’” She picked up my current read on the nightstand, flipped through a few pages and put it back down with a snort. “You’re special? Is that why you live way out here instead of in your pack’s house?”
More like broken, but I didn’t correct her. “My wolf doesn’t crave bunny blood like my pack mates. That’s why I don’t participate in the Hunt. Which pisses the alpha off. In fact, I don’t get along with anyone in my pack. So, I live out here.”
“Why do you stay then?”
“My brother,” I rasped.
“Oh… Shit. I’m—I’m sorry. I was just protecting myself. I didn’t ask to be here, and I didn’t ask to watch my cousin get torn apart.”
“The blonde-haired girl?”
She nodded, her bottom lip trembling. “Yeah. I saw your brother and some of your pack mates kill my cousin. I ran, but… When I had no choice, I killed your brother. The way I see it, we’re even.”
“We’re not even,” I snarled. “There’s a truce in place, and you broke it.”
“What do you care about the truce? You said yourself that you don’t need rabbit shifter blood. You’re different from your pack. You need something else.”
I could see she was scraping up her courage as she stole closer to me, closing that precious distance between us.
With every step she took toward me, her scent grew in potency.
Was she trying to get me to shift? Of course… If we mated, her heat cycle would end. She’d be covered in my scent, which would allow her to sneak through the woods undetected by my pack.
Clever bunny.
“I know what you’re up to, and it’s not going to work,” I growled.
Ruth inched even closer with an innocent smile cresting her perfect lips. I’d never seen a smile so fake. “And what am I up to?”
“You want me to fuck you so your heat will end. My cock is your ticket out of here.”
“So what? You were gonna let me go anyway. This way, you get to mate a bunny. We’re not just good at making babies, you know. We’re really,reallygood at it.”
She was dumping on the charm. Though, by her scent, she was inexperienced. I’d bet that worthless male she’d rode in with was the only partner she ever had. Not that it mattered to me.
“Wolves and bunnies don’t mate. It’s unnatural. It’s?—”
She closed the last stretch of distance between us and plucked my cigarette from my fingers. “Forbidden? A crime against nature? An abomination?”
Ruth put the cigarette to her mouth, and her thick lashes fluttered when the taste of my saliva hit her. She blew the smoke from her nose, reminding me of a bull—especially with that septum piercing. “That makes it kind of hot, doesn’t it?”
It did.
This whole situation was so wrong. She’d come here to die in some horrible ritual put in place by our ancestors hundreds of years ago. She’d nearly been ripped apart and instead killed my brother to save her own hide. Her pale skin was still crusted in his blood. If I mated her and the pack found out, I’d be disowned at best.
Fuck. That only made me want her more. And admittedly, I was getting tired of holding my wolf back.
“If you stay, if we do this, I won’t be able to control my wolf. You’ll be at its mercy.”
Goosebumps pebbled her flesh, and her fake smile wavered. To bite her would mean to claim her. If she survived our mating, she’d be branded as mine forever. No matter how much distance she put between us, she’d always feel me. Maybe that was punishment enough.
