Now he’s using my knife to clean out a few lean twigs and somehow... braiding them together to make a sort of grid. He then strips two sturdier, short branches of their leaves and sticks them into the ground, on either side of the fire, and places the grid on top.
After which, he turns to the dead pig and starts skinning it.
“You have done this before,” I whisper. “All of this?”
“Hunting? Lighting a fire? Roasting meat outdoors? Oh, yeah.”
“Do you... always do that? At home?—”
“We don’t live under the sky, princess. We have fortified cities built on the mountains. Like I told you, I know how to use silverware.”
My face heats. “You did. And I knew that. It’s just that people say?—”
“People say a lot of things.” His mouth quirks, though, and he gazes at me from under those long, pale lashes, shifting on his feet where he’s crouching.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s okay. We may use silverware and have fortified cities, but we’re still savages.”
“But you said?—”
“We’re not animals.” He sighs. “Yet, we aren’t like you. It’s true, we are outside a fair bit. We enjoy hunting and killing our prey. Eating the meat raw and bloody. Running and brawling. Fucking under the sky.”
Swallowing is difficult. “I see.”
“It’s just a different kind of life. No balls and complicated etiquette. No coddling our women or them submitting to us.” He winks. “Except in sex, of course.”
Why does he keep talking about sex? The fire in my neck is spreading through my body, setting it alight. “Okay.”
“But it’s a beautiful place.”
“The mountains? Aren’t they bare rock and cliffs?”
“You wouldn’t know their beauty,” he says hoarsely, “that savage nature with its black trees and purple foliage, the yellow rocks where water trickles, the great wildcats stalking the bare rock, and the antlered wild goats scrambling higher and higher. To the eagle nests. To the dragon nests. So close to the sky.”
Breathless, I watch his beautiful face, the emotions flitting through his eyes, and my heart hurts in the strangest way. He longs for his home. He is in love with the place and his ways. Savage he may be, but he’s also noble in his nostalgia and desire to return, his love of nature and its creatures.
Am I really falling for a werewolf? The thought is so preposterous, I huff out a laugh.
“Funny, am I?” he grumbles.
“That’s not… it’s not why…”
His intense gaze pins me. “You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not. I was coughing.” I demonstrate. “Got something in my throat.”
He frowns. “Don’t lie to me, Princess. I can hear your heart racing.”
“And only lies can produce such an effect?”
“No. Not only.” His frown eases. “But I know when you are aroused, and right now, you’re not.”
“You’re obsessed with sex,” I snap.
“Guilty as charged. Like never before. Ever since I met you, my dick has been hard as a rock.”
Choosing to ignore that—because it would imply he finds me attractive and I know I’m not—I go sit on a low rock as far away from him as possible. “My heart could be racing for any number of reasons.”
