Moonlight: The Big Bad Wolf (Black Swan 4) (35 page)

"It's so beautiful," she said. "What does it feel like to fall down in the snow?"

Grey looked around and saw a deep drift. He bounded toward it, leaped into the air and dived in. When he came up, he had snow all over his muzzle. She laughed and he wagged his tail. At first he wasn't sure what was happening. He felt something different going on at the end of his spine. It took a few seconds for him to put together that it must have been...

No. No. No,
he thought.
Stalkson Grey does not wag his tail.

The woman was taking him apart bit by bit. That was four firsts in one day. He'd taken a snowball to the groin, submitted to the pleasure of being ridden by a female, apologized,
and
wagged his tail. How did he feel about that? He examined his feelings and concluded that his life had taken a decided turn for the better. What tribe needed a king with a twig up his sphincter?

They spent a couple of hours hiking. From time to time Grey ran here and there showing off how fast and flexible he was.

At one point she asked about the lack of people.

"Aren't you afraid to be out here alone? What if there were bad animals or something?" He ran around in front, whirled and leaped into her path baring his teeth and snarling with a ferocity she was glad wasn't turned on her in earnest. "So you're saying you're the baddest animal of all?"

His ears pointed straight up while he gave her a doggy-style grin and wagged his tail. She laughed again and kissed him on the snout.

When they returned to the lodge, Luna opened the door and let him in.

She turned around just in time to see him shift into a gloriously naked, indescribably beautiful man. Following her line of sight, he looked down and then grinned at her.

"Admit it. You are
fascinated
by my penis."

She raised her eyes to his. "It's magic. I've learned that I can make it grow just by staring at it."

She gasped when he rushed her without warning and gathered her into his arms. His tone dropped to low and raspy. "Is that the only reason it's magic?"

She giggled, but felt silly about it. She just couldn't seem to stop. "You want me to list the ways?"

"Oh, I don't think you've seen
all
the ways yet."

"Can we start a fire before you show me more magic tricks?"

They spent the afternoon lazing together in front of the fire with mulled wine, talking and touching the way lovers do. When Grey's stomach rumbled, they got up and went to the kitchen to make an early dinner together.

***

CHAPTER_17

When Pandora learned that Rejuvenata was missing, presumed taken by force, she was furious. For a light Abraxas, anger was a state that was as unusual as an unselfish act by a dark Abraxas.

Deliverance didn't age like humans and his body didn't suffer stress like humans either. He didn't breathe harder if he exerted himself and his heart didn't speed up either. It maintained a strong, slow, steady beat no matter what, even if he was pounding a court clerk on the desk of a judge's chambers. The woman's back was on the desk that had been cleared by the sweep of a powerful forearm. Her rump was pulled to the edge of the desk and her legs rested on the bronzed shoulders of the demon who stood over her.

The incubus didn't enjoy sex the way humanoids did. He took sustenance from the pleasure his partners took from having sex with him. Some might call that a subtle distinction, but there is a difference between enjoying succulent lobster dipped in pure melted Irish butter and having an orgasm. Anyone who has experienced both will testify to that fact.

When Pandora popped in next to them, Deliverance grinned and said, "Auntie! S'up?" without compromising the rhythm of his stroke. He continued to grin while she fumed, as if he got an extra thrill out of performance exhibitionism taken to the extreme.

"Are you quite done?" She was livid.

"Hold on."

The woman on the desk with her skirt bunched around her waist might have been modest enough to want to be embarrassed. She probably wanted to stop the loud and open-mouthed moaning and various other guttural, somewhat unattractive noises. Between that and the squishing, suction, and slapping noises that tend to accompany fucking in that position, it was a pornographic symphony. She may or may not have been able to think clearly enough to have processed the fact that the recent arrival, the one who had appeared out of nowhere and was then standing two feet away glaring, appeared to be in her mid to late twenties and was as flawlessly perfect as a goddess. All of that was pure conjecture, because all that could be known for sure was that the clerk was too caught up in the moment to stop the crest she was riding.

"Wait for it." Deliverance continued to hold his aunt's gaze and grin as he thrust his impressive cock like a piston. She had hands on hips and looked ready to strangle him. "Wait for it."

When the random snack reached her orgasm, Deliverance closed his eyes as the pleasure of filling up his energy stores washed over him. An incubus demon didn't experience ejaculation unless coitus was performed with a partner who carried sufficient demonic genetics. The end was entirely established by the orgasm of the female being engaged. Without a doubt he could have brought the court clerk to multiple orgasms, but he decided it would probably be disrespectful to make his aunt wait for more than one.

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

He didn't look the least sorry.

"Deliverance, you idiot. Do you have something you want to tell me?"

"Wow. Nice to see you too." Her color was starting to darken. "Alright. Alright. I did it."

"Needless to say..."

"You want her back."

She exploded. "Of course I want her back, you miscreant! Where did you take her?"

Deliverance had the decency to look a little sheepish. "I let the werewolf have her."

The color that had been building in Pandora's face disappeared all at once and left her looking pale. She opened her mouth to speak, but was so stunned that she simply gaped while willing the earth to open up at her nephew's feet and swallow him whole.
After
he had returned her property.

"You gave her to a werewolf?"

"Well, first, I didn't give her. I just facilitated the transportation. And, he's not just any werewolf. He's one of the Loti Dimension kings."

Her shock and outrage were so complete that she couldn't seem to stop shaking her head back and forth.

"Why would you do something so utterly bizarre?"

"I think he loves her."

"Loves her? That's impossible. When would one of my thirteen have an opportunity to court love?"

He looked at his cuticles. "I'd rather not say."

"This isn't over. She had better be back in the annex by tonight."

"Whatever."

"Ugh! You are
such
a child."

And with that she was gone.

Grey was slicing cheese at his kitchen counter. It was one of the few things they would both eat.

"Luna."

"Yes?"

"Will you stay?"

She sighed. "What would I do if I stayed?"

"You'd be free to pursue your own interests. What would you want to do?"

"I would want to do what I'm trained to do - work with herbs."

"We have herbs. You could do that here." He opened a cabinet to reveal rows of glass apothecary jars.

"Grey! Bring these down and let me see what you have!"

"Okay." He started setting the jars on the counter.

"This is wonderful. Did all of these come from around here? They're wildcrafted?"

"Most of them. Some of them are from other places."

She took the lids off the jars one at a time and examined each herb. Then she froze, holding a pinch of an herb that looked like dried mushroom. "What do you use this one for?"

"Which one?" He looked over. "Oh. That's frenalwort. We use it for celebrations." She looked so serious he knew something was wrong. "What is it, Luna?"

"This herb is psychotropic. It's an hallucinogen."

"Okay," he said cautiously.

"Do all your, um, werewolves use this herb?"

He shrugged. "Sure. Yeah. Now and then." He didn't know how to interpret the look on her face. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know how to tell you this." She shook her head. "The properties in this herb stay in your system a long time." He nodded for her to continue. "And, if even a tiny residue of this was in the system of a female when she became pregnant, it could influence the gender of her baby and prejudice development toward male."

She watched various emotions cross his face without him ever moving a muscle.

"That can't be right. My people have been using frenalwort for generations."

"Does it grow here?"

His brows drew together in a frown. "No."

"So you get it from somewhere else."

"We trade for it. It grows in the southwest desert lands. There are tribes there who live off the sale of it."

"At some point, you began getting a supply from a different strain. Or the plant mutated because of changes in the environment.

"We call it drayweed. It has a very bad reputation and it's against the law in most places for women of child-bearing age to use it. There was a region in my world with a culture that valued males over females. In that culture the males had privilege, authority, power, respect, entitlement, everything. Every family wanted boys because it gave the family more prestige.

"You can probably guess what happened. They were not forward thinking enough to realize that females are necessary to survival of a race, actually
more
necessary to be precise.

"They discovered that drayweed, what you call frenalwort, adds something to the advancing pregnancy so that the fetus proceeds on a path to express masculinity. In one generation an entire culture was threatened with extinction."

She let the pinch she held between her fingers drop back into the jar and put the lid back on. "You know what this means?"

"It doesn't mean anything." He went back to putting slices of cheese on plates.

She looked at him like he'd gone mad. "What do you mean? Didn't you just move half your people off world because of this?"

He shrugged. "It's done now. Do you want pears?"

"Grey!" Her voice was raised and he ignored her. "Grey!"

She was yelling at him? Yelling? He didn't have a problem with her looking him straight in the eye like she was an equal. He submitted to her during sex when she wanted to be on top - even liked it. He even tolerated having her put her arms around his neck when he was in wolf form. But scolding? No. That would not be tolerated.

"Grey! You have to tell them!"

He slammed the knife into the cutting board and wheeled on her.

"You seem to have mistaken me for someone who is not the king of this tribe. I don't
have
to do anything, human. I'm alpha." He was breathing heavy. "Alpha!" She took a step back, a little scared and a lot surprised. "Rain never argued with me like this."

Grey saw hurt in her eyes.

"Rain. Your mate who died?" she whispered.

He immediately regretted what he'd said and started to reach for her, intending to pull her close and smother her with kisses and tell her how sorry he was. But, just as a huge tear spilled out of her eye, Deliverance popped in next to her.

The demon grabbed her arm. "Sorry, dude. Auntie wants her girl back. Ho's before bro's. You know how it is."

Grey lunged for Luna as his mouth tried to form the word, "No,", but she was gone. He was certain he'd seen shock and sadness mixing with the hurt on her beautiful face before she disappeared.

She was sure she'd seen him soften and relent just before she was ripped away.

***

CHAPTER_18

Stalkson Grey sat facing the window that had bathed his bed in filtered moonlight for the only two nights of his life that were worth reliving. It was the night of the full moon, which meant that it was painful to stay in human form, but that pain didn't even have a chance to make an impression on his consciousness next to the loss of Luna, the human who was his true mate.