Wolf’s Glory (15 page)

“Like what you see?”

She had meant that to be sexy and confident but it came out a little uncertain. His answer was to capture her mouth in hot kiss while his hands let go of her wrists to smooth over her body. He paused at her breasts to flick the nipples with his thumbs while he growled into her mouth. Just that quickly, he made her feel like a sex goddess, desired by multitudes. But right now the only man she wanted was him, because she knew that he was the only man who saw her like this.

Something cold and wet touched the tender skin of her underarm, exposed by her arm"s outstretched position. Her eyes shot open, and she had to move Shadow"s hair to see a brown and white dog dancing around them. “What the hell?” she began.

Shadow applied his mouth to her breast. “Ignore The Beagle. She"ll go away

eventually.”

She hadn"t seen any little dogs in camp. “The Beagle?” she said dubiously. “Where did she come from? I haven"t seen her before.”

“She belongs to my cousin Laura.”

Even the feel of his teeth scraping lightly over her nipple didn"t distract her from the news that he had a female cousin. “You have a cousin named Laura? I haven"t met her.”

“Him. He drifts around during the warm months and only stays with the Clan for the winter. He"s back early this year.” Shadow raised his voice without lifting his head away from her. “Go away, Laura. You can meet my mate later.”

Glory turned her head and peered through Shadow"s hair. A burly, heavily muscled man with a shaved head stood a few yards away from them with his back half-turned. She could see how muscular he was because he was wearing leather leggings with a breechcloth but no shirt. She screamed and tried to hide under Shadow"s hair. Shadow jumped.

“Get out!” she shrieked. “Get out, you asshole Peeping Tom!”

The back of Cousin Laura"s neck turned dull red. “I was just trying to catch my damn Beagle,” he told a bush with choked sincerity. “I didn"t see anything. Honest.”

Shadow leapt off her, ignoring his state of aroused nudity and grabbed the joyous dog.

“Here, Laura. Take her. We"ll see you later.”

The other man reached blindly for the squirming dog. He and Shadow had the same

broad shoulders and muscular backs, but Laura was at least six inches shorter. Since Shadow was at least six five, that didn"t make Laura short, just shorter. “I"ve changed my name to Lobo,” he growled. “I"ve told you that a hundred times.”

Glory clutched the blanket around her. “Get out!”

The bushes snapped and cracked as Laura/Lobo made a hasty retreat, holding his dog protectively to his chest. Shadow came back to her with his long hair swaying over his naked body. It was almost enough to entice her into dropping the blanket, but not quite. When Shadow reached to pull the blanket away she tightened her grip on it.

“No,” she said clearly. “Did you know he was there?”

“I heard the Beagle come through the bushes,” he shrugged. “And I could smell Laura.”

“So you knew he was there, and didn"t say anything? You didn"t stop, or warn me or …

What"s the matter with you?”

Shadow looked confused. “You"re upset.”

“No shit!”

He studied her face carefully. “Tell me why you"re so upset, sunshine.”

He had to be kidding. “I"m not a performing animal in a freaking circus!” she shouted. “I don"t know about you, but I don"t want an audience while we"re making out!”

“Laura was just getting his dog. He wasn"t watching us. He would have been gone in a minute if that stupid dog of his hadn"t startled you. I hate that Beagle.” He tried to draw the blanket away from her breasts again, but she gripped tight. “Sunshine, I promise, if it ever happens again I will stop and wait until we"re alone.”

“Damn straight. Now get lost while I find my clothes.” The thought of her own, clean clothes and the idea of Shadow patiently searching the dried-out tall grass for them softened her. She looked up at him. “Thank you for bringing me my clothes.”

He looked adorably crestfallen. “But don"t you want to…”

“Not right now. Your cousin and his dog killed the mood, ya know?”

“I"ll break his neck,” Shadow growled.

“Whatever. Shoo. Scram. Get lost.”

For a minute it looked like he was going to argue, but he sighed and walked a few yards away before turning his back. “I can"t leave you alone this far from camp, but I"ll give you privacy.”

Her own clothes! They had survived a horrible adventure in the sky but didn"t look the worse for wear. Except … They had grown in the last nine days. Her T-shirt seemed a little big. The black satin bustier didn"t sit quite right. And her jeans zipped and buttoned closed way too easily. In fact, there was a gap between her body and the waistband of the jeans.

“Ha!” she shouted jubilantly. “I"ve lost weight! I"m getting skinny!”

Shadow wheeled around with alarm on his face. “No!” His eyes roamed over her body anxiously. “You can"t lose weight.”

Glory shoved her feet into her black leather combat boots and glared at him. “Says who?” she demanded, lacing the boots up with quick jerks. “What if I want to be skinny?”

Geez. By the look on his face you"d think she"d just confessed to wanting to be best friends with a mass murderer. “No.” The horror on his face was swallowed up by arrogant command. “I forbid it. My mate will stay soft and round.”

“Forbid?” Glory stopped lacing her boots to straighten with a snap and glare at him.

Damn. Naked, with his hip-length black hair drifting over his magnificent body, he was hard to glare at. She managed it. “Excuse me? Who died and made you king?”

“I am Alpha, and your mate. I will see that you have enough food to eat and clothes to wear. That"s what a mate does.”

“Whatever. Put your diaper thing back on, would"ja?”

He stared at her for a minute then turned and bent over to grab his breechcloth from the ground. The view of his tight butt was inspiring. It almost inspired her to tear her shirt off again. But there would be time for that later. Now she should be getting back to see what Jill needed done for the survivors. Her shift had probably already started and she was in trouble, so she let Shadow pick her up and run back to camp. She even let him kiss her outside Jill"s tent in full view of Heather and some other women. She whispered that she was looking forward to tonight. It was true after all, and the sour look on Heather"s face was almost as precious as Shadow"s smile. But not quite. Shadow was damn bossy, but he had a killer smile. He handed the tattered blue bag to her and gave her one more kiss. The memory of the kiss stayed with her while she helped the survivors to eat and get cleaned up. Even the cold drizzle that began to fall couldn"t banish the heat of that kiss.

The drizzle kept on all morning and afternoon, making the day cold and dreary. After a morning of getting soaked helping Marissa and Emma cut up strange vegetables for stew, Glory spent most of the afternoon in the tent Rose had helped in. She hadn"t been in here before, and she was pretty sure she knew why. Jill had probably set things up so Glory wouldn"t have to spend hours a day clenching her teeth. There were three women there, all injured in ways that made them unable to walk, but there was nothing wrong with their mouths, except the garbage that came out of them. Two had been friends before the crash, Alyssa and Krissy, and they were skinheads. Neo-Nazis. Whatever. They began preaching at her that the Jews had made the plane crash and had been the real evil geniuses behind the nuclear attacks. Then they began trying to convince her that the Clan was lying about all of it so they could brainwash the women and sell them as sex slaves. Glory was a firm believer in live and let live, but these two made Glory wish she could smother them with their pillows.

The third woman, whose name was Sherry, wasn"t a neo-Nazi, and she didn"t agree about the Jews, but she seemed to think the idea about the Clan lying and wanting them all for sex was true. It took only a half hour of this to make Glory lose her previous happy glow.

“Don"t knock it until you try it,” she snapped at the three women.

They gaped at her. “Huh? Try what?”

“Sex with one of the Clan. It"s fantastic.” She drawled the last word out tauntingly.

Sherry shuddered. “That"s disgusting.”

Hitting a woman with broken legs would be mean. Satisfying, but mean. Glory smirked at her instead. “You don"t know what you"re missing.”

“They"re animals!”

Sherry seemed pretty set on that idea, and Glory didn"t want to argue. She went to the fire in the center of the tent and scooped three bowls of stew from the heavy pot sitting half buried in coals. Funny, just a week ago that would have felt strange. Now it was normal to be cooking over an open fire.

“Stew again?” whined one of the neo-Nazis. Alyssa? Or was she Krissy?

Glory was kind of tired of stew too, but she hated to agree with them over anything so she said nastily, “You don"t have to eat it.”

“I"ll eat it,” said Sherry. “It does get a little boring, but I"m cold and the stew is hot.”

Glory looked around for another blanket to give her but couldn"t find one. The rain made everything damp, and that made everything cold. A wind shivered the canvas walls, and they could hear water splatter off it. She gave the woman the bowl and a spoon, and the other two accepted some with grumbling and more rhetoric about filthy Indians. Glory was pretty sure her tongue was bleeding from biting it. Too bad the bowls were so valuable. She"d like to break a couple over these morons" heads. The Clan had only enough bowls for themselves and a few visitors. This many extra people in camp had required some hasty bowl carving from wood that was hard to come by, here on the mostly treeless plains. Glory wouldn"t ruin their work, but these whiney chicks should be nicer to the woman who had to help them go to the bathroom. They might find their next bowl of boring stew served in the same bowl they peed in.

A voice called from outside, asking permission to enter. Sherry had a deer-in-the-headlights look. Glory yelled for whoever it was to come in, and the flap was lifted to admit a man who was wearing fringed leggings with his breechcloth. He bobbed his head at Glory, but went to Sherry"s bed to unfold a blanket and spread it over her. Sherry kept her face turned rigidly away from him. Glory could see she was shaking.

The man"s face showed hurt. “Can"t you even look at me?” he pleaded, crouching beside the low bed. “You were cold, so I brought you a blanket.”

Sherry didn"t look at him, didn"t speak. The guy sighed and stood up. He made his way back to the door before looking back. “I am your mate,” he said clearly. “I will wait for you to accept me. But I would like it if you would at least look at me when I come to see you.”

When Sherry kept her face turned away, he left. The desperate, pained look on his face bothered Glory. It was kind of like the look she"d seen on Shadow"s face sometimes. “Why wouldn"t you look at him? He"s hot.”

Sherry"s head whipped around to glare. “He"s an animal!”

Glory remembered what Shadow had done to her in bed last night and felt a warm tingle go through her. “And that"s bad?”

Venom was thick in the air. Sherry turned her head away again, but the other two began spouting self-righteous garbage. “You"re one of them. Filthy, unnatural mongrels should be sterilized so they can"t contaminate pure bloodlines.”

Glory seldom found herself at a loss for words. She gaped at those two now. That poor guy wanted Sherry for his mate, and she was stuck in a tent with two Nazi SS bitches filling her head with trash. “They saved your lives. They"re doing extra hunting and using up their winter supplies so you can eat and be warm. And all you can do is lie there and badmouth them?”

Glory was never so glad to see Shadow as she was when he came to get her later that afternoon. He was flanked by his cousin Laura on one side and The Beagle on the other.

Glory knew she was red as fire when she mumbled a hello to Laura. He looked supremely nonchalant, as if he hadn"t ever met her before, much less while she was naked on her back with a man on top of her. The Beagle danced ecstatically around her. This morning, the dog had looked brown and white, but that was because she"d been looking up at her from the ground. Now Glory could see she had a black patch on her back like a saddle. The Beagle trotted into the tent and wiggled her way happily around Sherry"s bed, but when she went over to Alyssa and Krissy her hackles raised, and she growled at them. Which, Glory thought approvingly, showed damn good instincts. When they had all left the tent, she bent to pat The Beagle"s head.

“Yes,” she crooned at the dog. “Those two girls are Bad. Calling them bitches would be an insult to you, wouldn"t it? You"re a very smart little dog.” She made little kissing noises before she straightened back up. “Seriously,” she told Shadow. “Those two are a waste of time. The other one … Some guy says she"s his mate, but she doesn"t like him. And I know why.”

She had both men"s attention. Shadow said to Laura, “Jumping Stag"s wolf chose Sherry for his mate. She rejects him because she thinks he"s unnatural. Why, sunshine?”

“Because those two witches keep telling her how unnatural you all are. You should get her moved to a different tent.”

Laura nodded solemnly. Shadow had a faint frown on his face. “Unnatural? Why would they think that?”

“Well, duh, there aren"t werewolves where we"re from. And those two belong to some crazy White Power group who think people who aren"t blond, blue-eyed Protestants aren"t really people. Werewolves are probably new to their list of non-humans, but you rank right up there with Jews and Latino Catholics.”

Laura blinked once. “What"s a Latino Catholic?”

Shadow"s frown was less faint. “We"re not werewolves.”

“Whatever. Where are we going?” She shivered a little in the cold, damp air.

Shadow put his arm around her. “The council is going to judge Two Bears tonight.”

Glory wasn"t sure she wanted to watch the council trial, but Shadow was firm about her going. While they ate half-raw steaks she was thinking about what she wanted to do to him tonight in bed, but for once his mind wasn"t on sex. So this council thing must be pretty serious. It was held in the biggest tent, but even so the tent was so packed with every member of the Clan that people were sitting practically in each other"s laps. They sat in circular rows in the round tent. The five women had front row seats, and they all had serious looks on their faces. Shadow pushed her to the front row on one side of the fire, to a seat between Jill and Tara, then he went to sit next to his father in the first row on the other side of the fire. It was dead silent while they waited. Glory could hear the rain drum against the canvas and hiss in the fire when it dripped through the smoke hole. She missed Shadow"s warm bulk. Jill just didn"t put out the same level of warmth, and it was cold in here.