Wolf’s Princess (8 page)

She absorbed that, a little flattered and trying not to be. “Okay, tell me why you run a whorehouse.”

His gaze was fixed on their hands, where he ran the pads of his thumbs over the backs of her hands in small circles. “You know about the laws regarding women in Omaha?”

“Some. It sounds pretty wild, though, so I don’t know what’s true. Women have to pay a special tax to be married? And they have to pay to stay single too?”

“Those are both true. When a woman turns eighteen years old, she has three options: pay one hundred gold strips to marry, pay ten gold strips each year she is single, or go to work in a house.”

“One hundred gold?” she squawked. “That’s twenty years’ wages for most people.”

“Yes. Not many people can afford to get married. Even paying ten gold strips for the annual Single Status Tariff is out of range for a lot of families.” His face, when he lifted his gaze to hers, was set in unyielding lines. “So many women have to work in houses like mine.”

“A whorehouse.”

“I don’t like to call them whorehouses. It’s demeaning.”

“So is being forced to be a prostitute.”

“Yes.” He met her gaze squarely. “I hate it, and that’s why I’m working to change it. When I first went to work at Ms. Mary’s, I read the law back and forth and found a loophole. The law says a woman must work at a house. It doesn’t specify what kind of work she has to do. In the other houses, cooking and other housework is done by men. In my house, those tasks are done by women. I don’t force anyone to have sex for money. Do you understand?”

Rose thought he sounded desperate for her to accept what he did. “That must have been hard on your wolf. He must have hated it.”

“He did.” Sky let go of her hands to run his fingers through his short hair. “He wanted to come back here to you immediately. The trip to Omaha wasn’t what he wanted in the first place. But when he discovered what was happening to the women in Omaha he wanted to tear apart every man involved. He accepted our stay in Omaha.” His voice lowered to a soft mutter. “For a while.”

Knowing what she did of the wolves and their drive to protect women, she could believe it. “How did you end up working at a whor—I mean, a house? When you left the den you were going to work on the railroad.”

“That was the plan.” He laughed. Maybe it was bitter, or maybe it was just tired, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “When Quill and I first arrived in Omaha we found out the railroad wasn’t hiring workers until spring. We were allowed in the city on a one week visa. If we didn’t have work by the time it expired we’d have to leave.”

“A visa?” she echoed, remembering the foreign students at the University.

“Yes. It’s a permit issued by the city. Everyone in Omaha has to have papers they can produce on demand. Since we didn’t have anyone in the City to vouch for us, we were given a week to find jobs. But there weren’t any jobs. No one else would hire us for anything. We had no money, so we had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. If we left the city to let our wolves hunt we wouldn’t be allowed back in.” He smiled, a rueful twitch of his lips. “And I was too proud to give up and come back here like a puppy with its tail between its legs.”

She was quiet for a moment. “We were both young back then, and maybe a little stupid. I was scared and grieving, and I handled everything wrong.”

“No.” He took her dirty hand again and lifted it to his lips. The warmth of his kiss on her fingers made her swallow. “I was too excited to have found a mate to give you the time you needed to adjust to your new life.”

“See?” She was much too aware of his lean, alluring body beside her. She took her hand back and picked up the trowel to continue work. “We were both young. That doesn’t tell me how you came to be the owner of a house.”

From the corner of her eye she could see him reach for a weed. “Quill and I were going from business to business in Omaha, looking for work or even just a handout of food, when we saw a woman in an alley with three large men. They were pushing her from one to another and punching her. Quill and I stopped them.”

His prim tone made her laugh. “Did you kill them?”

“No. We broke a couple of jaws and dislocated some shoulders, but they ran off, still breathing. The woman was Ms. Mary, owner of one of the business establishments in Omaha. She took us home with her, gave us a hot lunch, and offered us each a freebie in gratitude.”

“A freebie?” She could guess what a freebie at a whorehouse would be. A slender snake of jealousy uncurled in her belly. “Did you accept?”

“No. Be careful with that claw thing. You could hurt somebody.”

Rose sent the claw thudding deep into the earth and glared at him. “I bet you wanted to.”

He raised his hands. “I was a seventeen-year-old boy. Of course I wanted to. But even if I had tried to go through with it, my wolf wouldn’t have let me. You were the only one he would accept, and you were the only one I wanted.”

Mollified, she nodded and shifted a few feet down the pumpkin patch to continue weeding. When he followed her, she moved a little more so he could work beside her. “Good. I’ve never been within five feet of a man outside the Packs until yesterday.”

“You’re a virgin, then.”

She spun on her knees to stare at him. Her teeth were clenched so tightly her jaw hurt. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m glad we’re both virgins. We can learn how to please each other together with no memories of other partners between us.”

How could she hold on to her anger when he gave such a soft answer? “Go on with your story about how you got to be the owner of a house.”

“Ms. Mary made Quill and I house monitors. Bouncers. We made sure none of the patrons became abusive with the women. The longer I was in Omaha, the more I wanted to help the women there. All the women. The mayor instituted the Women Acts about fifteen years ago. The Acts reduced women to a means of income for the city and especially the men who ran it. I decided I had to stay and work to change things.”

Rose tried to reason it out. “Why didn’t the people in Omaha vote him out? Or change the laws? Or rebel and kill him?”

“I’m sure they wanted to. There are no elections in Omaha. Mayor McGrath is guarded by a handpicked group of soldiers. Besides his personal bodyguard, there’s the Omaha City Guard. The City Guard is seven hundred men strong, and most of them are fanatically loyal to him. Rewards are offered for any information about discontent. Any hint of rebellion is punished. Fatally. All a man has to do to find his neck in a noose is make an offhand remark to a neighbor.”

What a terrible position for the people of Omaha to be in. It explained why fathers allowed their daughters to work in such places. “But you could kill him, couldn’t you?”

He lowered his voice to the merest thread of sound and moved closer to her, as if afraid of being overheard. “I could. But it wouldn’t help the people in Omaha. The mayor’s cronies would fight to see who would be the next mayor. It would be full scale war. People would be killed in the fighting. Half the city could burn. And at the end, who says the new mayor would be any better?”

“That’s terrible.” It reminded her of a depressing novel she’d had to read for a class in ninth grade. “I’m so sorry for the people there. Something has to be done.”

“I’m trying.” His eyes gleamed with an intensity that made her want to lean closer. “You understand why I had to stay? You know I wasn’t just ignoring you?”

She dragged her gaze from his face and took her time cleaning the clods of earth from the prongs of the garden claw. “I suppose. I wish you would have written to me more often.”

“I should have,” he admitted in a whisper. “There were things I wanted to tell you. So many of them would have gotten me killed, though. Rose, look at me, please.” His voice sunk even lower. “You’re so beautiful. I want to kiss you.”

She swallowed. With all the couples in the Pack happily mated, sex was all around her but she had never been kissed. Her curiosity and longing had grown every year. Kissing could be part of courting and not necessarily lead to marriage. Right? “Kiss me, Sky.”

He froze. She saw the exact moment her words sunk in because his eyes flared a hotter, deeper blue. His fingertips touched her jaw, tilting her head. His lips brushed lightly over hers. The kiss was over almost before it began. Sky lifted his head and brushed his thumb over her lower lip with an expression of tender wonder on his face.

“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” he murmured. “The last time I kissed you I scared you. But I’ve dreamed of doing it again, only better. Nicer, more gentle.”

“You could have done that years ago if you’d just come back.”

The sweetness on his face vanished. His expression reverted to cool distance. “I’ve told you why I couldn’t.”

“You could have come back for a visit, but you never did, not a single time. Not even for the Grandmother’s funeral.” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusing. She softened her voice. “That was such a hard time for me. I loved that old lady like she was my own grandmother.”

A quick glance at his face showed a ripple pass over his features. Grief? “I’m sorry, Rose. I wish I could have come. My competitors would have taken advantage of my being gone to try to take control of my house and the women there.”

“The same men who tried to hurt that woman? Ms. Mary?”

“Yes, the same ones.”

Rose wondered what it would be like to live in a place like Omaha. She would hate it, of course, because of the way women were treated, but Kearney was so boring. Nothing exciting ever happened here, where the biggest social outing was viewing the arrival of the train. A twinge of guilt singed her for even thinking that. She was safe here. In Omaha she would have had to pay sixty gold for still being single for the six years since she’d turned eighteen. She looked at Sky in his city casual wear, and wondered if he would miss the excitement of Omaha.

“If you were in Omaha, what would you be doing now?”

He shook his head with a sigh. “Probably working on the house budget for October, trying to figure out how to pay for a Halloween party that will draw paying customers away from the other houses.”

Rose stifled a giggle. Sky as party coordinator? Who knew? “Who will be doing that kind of thing now? Is Ms. Mary still there?”

Sky’s face stilled into carefully bland lines. “I’ll be doing it, with Ms. Mary’s help.”

Rose stilled too. “But you’re here now, so how can you plan parties for Omaha?”

He reached for her hand. “Rose, I have to go back. The train comes through again in two days. I’ll go back on it.”

She shook him off. “Back? You just got here.”

“I have to go back to Omaha.” He used both hands now to cup her face, staring into her eyes with almost mesmerizing force. “Omaha isn’t free yet. Eighteen-year-old girls are still being forced into sexual slavery. I can’t abandon them.”

“What about me?”

He closed his eyes with an expression of pain on his face. “I’m asking you to wait for me. Just a year, maybe two. Just until the Women Acts have been abolished.” He dropped his forehead until it rested against hers. “I can’t leave the women under my protection until I know they will be safe. Please understand, Rose.”

She did. That’s what made this so hard. In only an hour he had gone from being a slick stranger to someone she thought she could like. How had that happened? “But I’ve been waiting already for eight years,” she whispered in misery. “Another two years? I don’t think I can bear to wait that long.”

“You have to,” he whispered back. “God, I wish it was different. I wish Omaha would fix itself. But it won’t. Things are coming closer to change, but not close enough for me to leave. I have to be there.”

She pulled away and stood to wrap her arms around herself. “So what then? You’ll court me, get me pregnant, and leave me? Like your brother Jimmy left his wife?”

“No! I would never do that to you.” He stood too and pulled her arms loose to take her hands. “Rose. Rose, please don’t shut me out. If I had a choice, I would stay with you always.”

Wait two more years before she had a chance to hold her own child in her arms? Longer, actually, since it would take some time to conceive and carry the baby. Maybe, if she truly loved Sky, she’d be willing to do that, but she barely knew him. In the last hour of talking with him she’d found some respect for him and the choices he’d made, but that was a long way from love. “Sky, you do have a choice. Think about this from my point of view. I’ve waited—”

“No.” His voice was gentle as he squeezed her fingers, but a touch of the smarmy slickness she hated crept in. “The world doesn’t revolve around your timetable. You’ll need to wait a little longer, princess.”

Princess?
“Will I?” She was proud of the calm, cool tone of her voice. She pulled her hands back and bent to gather up the gardening tools. “No, I don’t really think so. Excuse me. I’ve spent enough time outside today.”

*

Sky watched his mate walk away from him with a torrent of swear words climbing up his throat. He jumped six inches when something bit his ankle. He rounded to see an ugly brown cat glaring at him out of narrowed eyes. “Get out of here.” He kicked at it. “Get!”

Paint’s voice came from behind him. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Rose loves that cat.”

The feline sneered up at him with an expression of disdain only a cat could produce, gave a sharp hiss, and turned to trot after Rose, tail stabbing up like a one finger salute. Sky clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

“I hate cats,” he muttered.

Paint snorted. “Every wolf hates cats. It’s the canine in us, I guess. But if you want Rose to accept you, you better accept her cat.”

Sky brushed the thought of the cat away. “Rose didn’t listen to me,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I tried to tell her about Omaha, but she didn’t listen.”

Paint pounded a fist into his shoulder in a show of sympathy. “She did. Give her a day to let it settle.”

“That’s all I have.” He turned to look at his cousin, not caring that his wretchedness showed on his face. “I shouldn’t be here now. We finally have enough sway with some of the council to bring a proposal to a vote.”