Ravenwood

by Margaux Gillis

Her heart pounded wildly in her chest; a fierce beast attempting to escape the cage of her ribs.

  Caleb continued. “The first night is spent wholly as a wolf, unable to shift back into human form until the pull of the moon abates at sunrise. After that, should you turn, you will be able to shift on command to your wolf form, and back again, no matter the phase of the moon.” He carefully lifted her hand to his mouth, his eyes meeting hers. He moved slowly, giving her ample time to pull her hand away if she wanted.

  She did not pull away.

  The stubble of his chin bristled against the skin of her hand and she remained still as his eyes left hers and focused on the small cuts she’d made in her own palm. His tongue darted out and licked at the wounds quickly. It was, she thought absurdly, more like a kitten than a wolf.

  Her mind stuttered on the word and could not move from it. Should she be horrified? Should she pull her hand back from Caleb and scream in terror? Was he a man or an animal? Or perhaps neither and both at the same time. As strange and unnatural as this was, she did not fear Caleb, nor was she repulsed by him. Her wounds stopped bleeding under his ministrations and she thought of her dream, with the white and black wolves, sitting next to each other. She realized the white wolf was her own self. As soon as she thought it, she felt something lock in place inside her. Of course she was the white wolf. Of course.

  Perhaps she’d been silent too long or perhaps there was something on her face while she thought. Caleb paused, pulling back from her hand.

  “Are you afraid of me now?”

  “No,” she answered easily.

  “You are so sure,” he said and Elinore didn’t know if it was a question or a statement.

  “Whatever you are, you are the same today that you were yesterday and the day before and the day before that. You’ve been kind to me. Thoughtful. Conscientious.” She paused looking over her hand while she thought. There was no pain from the small wounds in her palm and she marveled at how the slits on her skin seemed to repair themselves. “And I know myself,” she continued. “I may be turning into something else, a creature or a …”

  “Werewolf,” Caleb supplied. “We are called werewolves.”

  “A werewolf,” Elinore repeated, trying the word out. “I may be turning into a werewolf, but I am still myself. It is still my thoughts in my mind. Although, I do feel as though they are colored by something else, something more. But they are not foreign or unknown to me.” Her brow furrowed. “Indeed, I wonder if I have always had such feelings and thoughts, but they were never allowed to the surface, never allowed to gain such traction.” She flexed her fingers, looking at her once again blunt, human length nails. “I have wondered since coming to Ravenwood, since being bitten, what had come over me, but perhaps, it’s more what has been released. Something finally set free after a lifetime of entrapment.” She glanced up at Caleb and found his pale irises watching her intently. “You must think it ridiculous or foolish. It’s hard to explain to you, to a man, how you can feel things your whole life and learn to hide them under soft expressions and kind words. Press them down deep, like barbed wires to be hidden in your flesh and scarred over. And each time you do, you get better at it yet at the same time, you hate it a little more. But now…” Elinore thought of her dreams, where the white wolf, where she was growling and snarling, and she felt a rush of power. “But now, I feel as though I may no longer be in contradiction to myself.”

  There was a beat of time, a moment after she was finished, when Elinore feared Caleb’s brow would crease and he would declare that he could not understand what she was saying. Instead, he surged forward, his lips crushing against hers, painfully so, but she didn’t falter. She wrapped her arms around him - his neck and shoulders, feeling as his muscles shifted under skin and over bones. He bore his weight against her, pressing her down into the mattress and she let him. She could push him away if she wanted to. She could snap her teeth at him or make the low, growling sound she recalled from her dreams. Something in her told her that if she did, he would back away, he would leave her alone.

  But she did not want him to.

  Underneath him, in his bed, she felt surrounded by him - by his weight, by his scent, by his presence. Her legs were tangled both in her nightgown and in the bedclothes and surge of frustration rushed through her as she tried to kick them free. Caleb’s lips broke away from hers and his body shifted from her. She wanted to pull at him, to claw at him to come back until she realized he was reaching down to yank the bedclothes off their legs. He settled back on top of her and her nightgown hitched up over her hips as she wrapped her legs around his lean thighs. There were too many sensations for her to catalogue and she was trying to catch them all - the slight roughness of the hair on his legs against hers, the press of his hip-bones in the cradle of hers, the heat of his body seeping into her skin, one of his hands in her hair and the other sliding down the side of her torso, wrapping around her flank and then squeezing the meat of her leg hard. Elinore could feel his erection hardening against her, and it would be so simple, so easy for her to pull her nightgown up further and tilt her hips and offer up her body. She wanted to, but she was also afraid. Not of Caleb, but of what it would mean and how she would feel. She didn’t know if she was quite ready for that and she struggled with the words to tell him.

  “I don’t… I’m not…” she started, feeling breathless and heady. She wanted to keep on as they were, pressed against one another, kissing, licking and touching, but nothing more. Not yet.

  Caleb looked down at her, his face so close to hers that she had to move her eyes back and forth between both of his or go slightly cross-eyed and stare somewhere in the vicinity of his nose.

  “I am not yet ready for more,” Elinore blurted, wondering if he would understand what she meant, if he would think her childish, or unsophisticated. She willed him to understand, hoping she wouldn’t have to say more, hoping he wouldn’t press for more, even as she doubted he would.

  “Is this all right?” he asked, rocking his hips against her. She shivered at the deliciousness of the feeling.

  “Yes,” she breathed out, nodding. “I… like this.” The rhythm of his movement sent a thrill down low into her belly and she tried to match his motion, feeling clumsy, but learning quickly. She dug her fingers into his hair, so soft at the nape of his neck, and then, feeling bold, moved her fingers down, testing the flesh of his shoulders and then the bones of his ribs, then feeling them expand as he breathed.

  Caleb leaned in and ran his nose over the soft skin of her throat. She tipped her head back instinctually and then had a sudden thought.

  “Does this mean something? To wolves?” she clarified, trying to hold onto the thought as he pressed against her. A gasp escaped her as he canted his hips forward suddenly, rocking into her hard.

  His lips moved over the skin of her throat and then his tongue darted out and licked her neck and she curled in a bit, finding it ticklish.

  “Yes. Surrender, submission, trust.” Caleb bit at the skin with his teeth and she dug her nails into his back. “It means you trust me.”

  Elinore did trust him. She wasn’t sure what was entailed in the words ‘surrender’ and ‘submission,’ but ‘trust’ she could agree with.

  “And do you trust me?” she asked, whispering the words against his ear. “Like wolves do. Do you trust me?”

  He pulled back from her and then tipped his head back and to the side, baring his throat to her. Seeing the tender, vulnerable flesh in front of her, so easily exposed made her chest tight. She surged upwards, pressing her lips to the skin there, licking at his throat the way he’d done to hers only moments before. His skin was prickly with stubble - sharp against her tongue. She felt his hand come up against the back of her skull, cradling her head, holding her closer to his neck and she pressed her teeth against his skin. Caleb made a low, rumbling sound that pleased her, down to her bones and she smiled against his flesh. She pulled back to kiss his lips again, feeling the hot, wet slide
of his tongue against hers. He continued rocking his hips against hers and she wondered if he would slide his fingers into her, like he had before. She wanted that. She felt hot and tender in her sex and wanted to feel him inside again.

  Caleb pulled his mouth away from hers and she made a sound of displeasure at the loss.

  “I want to mark you, like I did last night.” His voice was husky and strained and he paused his hips, stilling his body against hers. She squirmed a bit against him, wanting the movement back. She wasn’t sure what he meant and something about her lack of knowledge must have shown on her face or in her body language. He slipped his hand up her nightgown and ran his fingers over her belly. “When I… spilled on you. It marks you. Other wolves will know you’re mine.”

  Elinore’s face burned hot at his words. “They’ll know we’ve done this? That you’ve…” she raised her eyebrows in what she hoped conveyed her meaning.

  “Yes,” he said fiercely, his hand sliding from her belly to her flank, squeezing at the flesh of her backside. “Does that bother you?”

  “And how will they know you are mine?” Elinore felt a surge of feminine strength at her question. If it was to be known to other wolves that she was Caleb’s, she wanted it known that he was hers. His lips quirked in an almost hesitant smile and the hand that was underneath her gown moved up from her backside, over her hips and then slid down her front until his fingers rested against her intimately - not yet inside her, but teasing lightly against her opening. Suddenly, she understood. He was marking her and, in the same way, she was marking him. It made her blush, but also made her feel powerful.

  “Yes.” She yanked his head down so she could bite at his lips. His fingers slipped into her and it was still new and wonderful. She moved her other hand down between them and shyly touched his member, feeling it hard under her hand. It was also soft, so strangely soft yet hard. She tried to concentrate on how it felt even as Caleb’s fingers moved inside her, distracting her. Feeling braver, she wrapped her hand around the length of him and he cursed, like he had last night. He propped himself up on his elbow, creating space between them and looked down at her hand on him. Elinore couldn’t help but look as well. Those were her slim, pale fingers against the darkening flesh of him. Wetness pearled at the tip, pale against his skin. She was doing that. She was making him cant his hips forward, thrusting into her hand. Her eyes darted to where his fingers were sinking into her, her thighs spread wide, wantonly. She was mesmerized. His thumb found that extra sensitive spot inside her again and she gasped. His fingers slipped out of her and he rose up suddenly and threw the bedclothes off, irritated by them. He was just out of reach and she strained to come up on her elbows until Caleb dropped his weight back down on her, luxurious and decadent. She wrapped her hand around him again, feeling the silken texture of his skin overlaid on top of his hard length. He nosed against the shell of her ear and whispered filthy things he wanted to do to her, things she wanted to blush at. At the same time, she wanted to hold him down and make him fulfill each one like a promise.

  His fingers inside her were relentless - pressing in, sliding out - and she felt the same building sensation that she’d had the night before, like she was chasing something only this time she knew what it was, she knew what it would feel like and she wanted it. Caleb kissed her hard and she reveled in it. She heard wanton sounds escape her mouth, mixing with similar sounds coming from him. Her back arched as she reached the crest of the sensation - feeling too much and not enough simultaneously. Her body relaxed against the bed all at once and he reared up and wrapped his hand around hers, still on his member. Even in her lax state she tried to watch how he touched himself, how he liked it, knowing she wanted to do this again. He tightened his hand on hers, holding himself in a firm grip, moving their hands faster. With a gasp he was spilling onto her, like he had last night. This time she understood it for it what it was - a marking, a claim, a declaration to any wolf who came near her. This belongs to me. She reached up and gripped at his neck, pulling him down roughly, wrapping her legs around him tightly, devouring his mouth even as his belly pressed against hers, spreading his seed on them both. If he was marking her, she would mark him as well. Everyone would know that he belonged to her and no one else. She arched her back, pressing herself against him, willing her mark to be on him the same way his was on hers. She wanted any wolf that met him to know that he was taken and they would have to answer to her should they attempt to discredit her claim.

  Coming back to reality felt like floating on a bed of water. Caleb undulated his hips slowly against hers and she heard a low purring sound coming from her throat and marveled at it. It was decidedly feline and the thought made her giggle.

  “What?” he whispered against her lips. “What are you laughing at?”

  “I’m purring like a cat,” she murmured. “I thought we were wolves.”

  He laughed along with her and she bathed in the sound, feeling warm and happy. He rolled them over so that she was atop him, her legs bracketing his hips. Caleb pushed her hair out of her face, trying to hold the mass of it back with his hand. She leaned over and was about to kiss him again when a knock at his door made her freeze. She stared wide-eyed at him like a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar.

  “Mr. Vollmond? Shall I tell the cook to hold breakfast for you?”

  One of the staff. Mary, if Elinore recognized her voice correctly. She blushed furiously, imagining what would happen if she was to open the door and come in, finding her astride Caleb, holding back her laughter by clamping a hand over her mouth.

  Caleb cleared his throat twice before he could speak. At first, he started to decline breakfast, but Elinore pinched him, hard on his hip, gathering the lean flesh between her fingers and mouthing, ‘I’m hungry’ at him.

  “Please tell the cook I shall be down momentarily,” Caleb called out and Elinore smoothed the pinched area of his flank with her fingertips.

  “You,” Caleb began and he clasped her around the waist as he sat up abruptly and she nearly squealed, almost turned on her backside by the sudden movement. She clutched at his shoulder, steadying herself, threading her fingers through his hair.

  Caleb sighed at her ministrations. “You shall be the death of me.” He kissed her once soundly on the lips and then smacked her leg. “We should ferry you back to your room before the servants find you missing.”

  Elinore managed to extricate herself from Caleb’s embrace, shimmying her nightgown down her body and finding her housecoat on the floor, tangled in the bedclothes. She felt like a giddy school girl. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to shout.

  She wanted to howl.

  At his closed door, Caleb leaned in close motioning her to do the same. He was listening, she realized, and wanted her to copy him.

  “If you focus your mind, you’ll find your hearing is greatly improved.”

  Elinore nodded at his words and mimicked his position, thinking carefully. True to Caleb’s words, Elinore could hear the sounds of the manor through the door. Servants down on the lower floor, Mrs. Thistlewaite in the kitchen, Alice reading aloud to her father and if Elinore thought very hard, she could almost hear… Hayter. She thinned her lips. He was stirring in his room and the realization that she was hearing him in his bedchambers made her wrinkle her nose and step back from the door. Caleb looked at her, amusedly.

  “What did you hear that put that look on your face?”

  Though he and his uncle seemed to have tension between them, Elinore didn’t feel comfortable telling Caleb her thoughts and feelings on Hayter.

  “Private… attentions being paid,” she said, lying easily. A horrid thought crossed her mind. “Could we be heard? Last night?” Her stomach rolled over at the thought that she and Caleb could have been listened in on.

  Caleb shook his head, pulling her close in his arms and almost petting her. “No. Well, yes, I suppose, but only by a wolf in the house and Hayter was asleep.”

  She felt assuaged by his words
and his touch, reaching her hands up to rest on his chest, which was now regrettably clothed. He leaned forward and rubbed his cheek against hers and although it was a strange and unusual thing, she liked it. It occurred to her that he’d done something similar a few times - rubbing his nose along her throat, or petting her with his hands.

  “Is that special to wolves?” she asked. “When you press your face or nose against me?”

  It was Caleb’s turn to look slightly embarrassed, ducking his head. “Yes. It’s a form of scenting. It’s something we do in a pack.”

  Elinore leaned forward and rubbed her cheek against his. “Like this?”

  His arm tightened around her for a moment. “Yes, like that.” She pulled back and looked at his face. He looked unaccountably pleased and it made her happy.

  “I think if we go now, we can get you back to your room without anyone seeing,” Caleb said. Elinore nodded and they quietly crept out of his room. She felt dangerous and excited. She focused her hearing, finding she could easily tell there was no one about on the second floor. It was a safe sort of adventure - sneaking back to her room. Caleb kissed her soundly before ushering her into her bedchambers. Elinore closed the door behind her, leaning against it, taking deep breaths to calm her heart even as it raced lusciously in her chest. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. She thought of things she’d done with Caleb. Her cheeks went hot and her stomach fluttered. She felt she was in on a secret that only a select number of people knew. She must tell Charlotte all of this. If anyone would understand and not judge her for her decisions, it would be her best friend. But first, Elinore had to make herself presentable and have breakfast. With Caleb. She thought of seeing him across the table from her, knowing what he looked like in bed, knowing what he sounded like when he was aroused, she again had the feeling like she wanted to run and howl. It didn’t feel strange or foreign. It felt open and free. Was she a wolf now? Would she turn on the full moon? Perhaps she should she spare more thoughts for the astonishing revelation of Ravenwood - werewolves. Both Caleb and Hayter. She must make a list of all her questions so she wouldn’t forget any.