He’d give all his instructions like this, even though Wilma was always right there. And after they solidified the final routine they’d be debuting at the Detroit State Fair at the end of August, he stopped saying anything at all. Even to Ursula.
So then, Wilma wondered, why did he continue to watch her. Suspicion? Maybe. But somehow that explanation wouldn’t sit. And speaking of things that wouldn’t sit. While Wilma’s human was here to learn and only to learn, her wolf stirred every time Bohdan so much as entered the room. And she fully stood up when the shark-eyed Ukrainian came to stand on the edge of the ring to watch the routine she and Ursula were rehearsing for their debut match.
The Ukrainian watched her. And Wilma’s wolf watched him right back. Unsettling Wilma, and confusing her, too.
It might have gone on that way up until she went into heat or until her father matched her to some rando. But just two weeks before her debut, Ursula came to their last practice of the day and instead of beginning right away, she told Wilma that Bohdan wanted to see her in his office.
The larger woman had a strange, almost glum, expression on her face, but Wilma knew better than to ask. Over the months, she’d found out that Ursula almost always answered questions about her brother in ways Wilma didn’t like.
Did Bohdan like the routine? “He has not told me to change routine.”
What were Bohdan’s future plans for All-American Wrestling? “My brother does not live tomorrow. He lives today."
And when Wilma had asked in as casual a voice as she could muster if Ursula’s brother had a girl, Ursula had answered, “Yes, he has girlfriend. Her name is All-American Wrestling. All other girls are just sex.”
Wilma had really not liked the answer to that last question, for reasons she still didn’t dare to explore. So instead of asking Ursula follow up questions now, she went straight back to the office she hadn’t seen since she cleaned it up three months ago.
“Sit down,” he said with his usual stony expression, indicating a cracked vinyl seat on the opposite side of his cheap desk.
“I’ll stand,” she answered, feeling rebellious for no reason at all.
A hard beat, then he said, “I have sold a large stake in All-American wrestling to the IWF. This means our operation will move from this shitty gym in Detroit to less shitty gym in Baltimore in two weeks. This also means your match with Ursula at the Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum is canceled.”
Her breath caught. And for a moment she wanted to die. This had been her last chance, her only chance to make her pro-wrestling dream come true and now it was over. Just like that.
But as quickly as her grief rose, it subsided. Because of course, this was how it would end. How it should end. Who did she think she was in the first place? As the black princess of Detroit, her entire life had been decided from the moment her mother died pushing her out. Her father had made it clear from the start that she’d need to mate who he said to make up for taking his mate. Her dreams or desires were never taken under consideration, only squashed. She should have known this brief stint in the human world wouldn’t have turned out any better.
“Congratulations,” she said, after working her throat a few times to get it out. “And…um…thanks, I guess, for training me as long as you did.”
She turned to go, determined to act as stoic as him about all of this.
But when she went to open the door, a large hand slammed down on it before she could.
She turned around, and there was Bohdan, his gaze furious for no reason she could understand. And standing so close, she could smell the snow and forest from where he grew up.
“Am I only one?” he asked her, his voice rough and shaky.
She shook her head, not understanding, hardly able to breathe with him standing so close.
“Am I only one who feel this thing?” He swinged a finger back and forth between them. “Who can’t sleep at night? Can’t think?”
She stared at him. She didn’t want to understand what he was asking her. But she did understand. More than she ever understood anything in her entire twenty years on this earth.
“No,” she said, her voice coming out just as shaky and rough as his. “You’re not the only one.”
Less than fifteen minutes later, they crashed through the door of his apartment kissing and fell onto his bed.
Bohdan's kiss was like him, heavy, intense, with an all-consuming hunger burning inside. There was no doubt in her mind that he wanted everything from her. Not just her lips, but her body and sex. And, Jesus help her, she wanted nothing more than to give it to him.
But when he unzipped her pants, the thought of all the disappointing things that would happen if she let him go any further made her catch his wrist.
“I want to,” she murmured, pulling herself away from his kiss. “But I ain’t never done this before…”
He regarded her for a beat, his gaze processing and analyzing before he said. “Your virginity. It is not something you wish to give me?”
Wilma swallowed. A way out…he’d basically given her one on a silver platter.
But wolves don’t truck with silver. “No, it’s not that. I kinda like the thought of my first time being with somebody I like, somebody I chose…” As opposed to whatever rich-ass wolf my father decides to mate me off to.
“But my kind…” She hesitated. All those sexy time feelings ratcheting down like a cooling motorcycle engine as her embarrassment rose. “My kind…has this weird…uh…I guess you could call it a vagina problem. I don’t think I can do this.”
He stilled and sat back. “You are okay with giving me virginity. But you don’t want to have sex with me?”
“No, it’s not that,” she rushed to answer as she sat up to face him. “I want to—believe me I want to. I like you. But I can’t make my vagina like you, too. There’s this disconnect for females like me. And that means I can’t…uh…get wet.”
A beat. Then he sighed. “I many times forget how you Americans know so much nothing about sex. Your women. And especially your men. I am, however, Ukrainian.”
Wilma’s brow scrunched. “What does that mean?”
“That means thank you. Thank you for giving me your first time,” he answered. “Have no fear, wolf girl. I can make you wet. And if I cannot, my friend KY will help your vagina like me as much as you do.”
Having grown up with the equivalent of a motorcycle gang, Wilma was pretty hard to shock. But her mouth fell open at his words. Only to get closed when Bohdan leaned forward and kissed her. Once, twice…before making his way down to the bottom half of her body and pulling down the biking shorts and underwear she’d worn to practice.
She never did meet Bohdan’s friend, KY, and less than ten minutes later, she cried her pleasure as he showed her just how wrong she was about her vagina not liking this Ukrainian.
All-American was Bohdan’s main girl, but over the next two weeks, he made Wilma his woman.
It should have been fun and games. Two people who liked each other doing what two people who only have two weeks left together do.
But Bohdan insisted she kept training with Ursula. And he continued to watch her. Sometimes with a sad look in his eyes when she came out of his bathroom, after taking a scalding hot shower and using a paranoid amount of soap to wash his scent off of her before going home.
She laid with him for hours after practice, but she never spent the night.
“What would happen if you take me home with you? Introduce me to your papa,” he'd asked one of the nights when they were lying in his big—but not California big—bed. Her head rested in the crook of his bent arm, and she had one arm slung across his waist in what had become their favorite position for talking. “Tell him I don’t have much now but I am businessman with plan and bright future.”
Wilma’s heart had cracked a little at the question, coming from a man who never explained himself, never humbled himself to others. But she had to tell him the truth.
“He’d pull o
ut his Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun. And it wouldn’t be a joke. He’d kill you. Just for showing up at his door,” she answered, keeping her voice firm and resolute, so he’d know just how serious she was. And to remind her own damn self about all the reasons her heart shouldn’t be leaping at the prospect of Bohdan wanting something more permanent with her.
“Because I am white?” Bohdan asked.
“No, because you’re not rich. Or like us,” she answered. And she left it there.
Bohdan’s eyes flashed, and she could tell it was hard for him to reconcile. But he didn’t bring it up again. And Baltimore kept getting closer and closer. Until suddenly like a song from that Annie movie, it was only a day away.
The night before her last practice, Wilma found her father at the kitchen table when she went in to see what their cook, Mrs. Chavez, had left for her in the oven.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said, surprised. It was nine o’clock on a Thursday, and 8pm was the start of the business day for people like him. Usually he’d be out on the streets, making deals all over the state in abandoned factories or even better, random fields “where everybody can see everybody and cain’t nobody pull no shit.”
But here he was, sitting in the kitchen, one of the few rooms in their mansion that didn’t look like it had been designed by a Motörhead album cover. He also wasn’t wearing his usual do-rag tonight. It’d been so long since she saw him without one she’d almost forgotten he was balding. And sometime since his last do-ragless sighting, his hair had gone from jet black, to pepper with a whole lot of salt.
He was getting old, she realized with a start. And he looked tired now, the usual raw hunger she’d come to associate with everything he did faded from his weary gaze.
“You okay?” she asked, eyeing him worriedly.
“How long you going to be working for these white folks?” he asked instead of answering.
“Volunteering,” she reminded him. “And just one more day. I’m cutting my losses. I don’t think they’re ever going to offer to introduce me to anybody in their fancy circle.”
“Could’ve told you that before you started up with them, but sometimes you gotta let bitches learn shit on they own,” he answered with an all-knowing shrug. Like a motorcycle riding Confucius. “Alright then, tell them crackers I need you home early tomorrow. We’re doing family dinner.”
“Family dinner,” she repeated, even more alarmed now than she’d been about his age a moment ago. “You mean, family dinner, like on The Cosby Show family dinner?”
A distasteful look passed over her father’s face. He was one of the few black people in America who didn’t excitedly tune in every Thursday to watch the show on NBC.
But eventually he nodded, “Yeah, exactly like that fake-ass oreo shit. Be home by seven. Got that?”
He stared her down in that hard way of his, brooking no questions or arguments. He was a lot like Bohdan in that way. Except Bohdan made her feel like the center of his world when he stared at her, whereas her father made her feel like the smallest thing in his.
“Got it,” she said quietly.
Her father regarded her for one more stern moment, and then like an owner who’d told his dog to heel, he got up and walked away.
“You cannot come home with me tonight?” Bohdan asked the next day, when she found him in the weight room before her last unnecessary training session with Ursula to tell him about her early departure. He immediately pulled her out of the weight room and into the hallway to remind her, “We only have tonight,” his voice low and angry.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Wilma answered, her own heart aching.
Her father had raised her to never be saying sorry to no white man. He hadn’t lost two teeth in 2 brutal death matches with the last King of Michigan’s beta, followed up by taking a silver bullet from the King of Michigan himself just to have his children bow and scrape around white folks like they was in some kind of Shirley Temple Tomfoolery. But Bohdan looked upset, like she’d punched him and hurt him bad.
“I’m sorry. But maybe it’s better this way. You know, quick like a band aid,” she said, trying to soothe him. Trying to soothe herself.
“What time do you have to be home?” he asked, his voice hard as stone.
“By seven, and it’s six now, so…”
“You will come with me to diner beneath my apartment. If we only have one hour left, we will talk.”
“Bohdan, why…?” she asked with a shake of her head. She wasn’t hungry for reasons that felt a lot like heartbreak. And they didn’t have a whole hour. Only twenty minutes, thirty tops if she wanted to get home on time. For all those reasons and more, this diner idea of his felt like a delay of the sad inevitable.
“Why?” he repeated, grimacing, like she’d punched him for real again, this time in the face. “Wolf girl… ya tebe kokhayu.”
Ukrainian. He collapsed into it sometimes. Especially when he was moving on top of her. “I don’t understand.”
He dipped his head. “Tak, you do,” he answered, his voice low and rough.
Wilma shook her head, tears hotting her eyes. “No, I don’t. I don’t understand your language.”
“Tak, you do. Those Ukrainian words you understand.” He stared back at her, his shark eyes just as hot with tears as her own. “Ya tebe kokhayu.”
And suddenly she found that she did understand even if she knew not a word of his language. I love you. That was what he’d just said. Twice. He loved her. He loved her in his language. And her throat clogged, because…oh Jesus, she couldn’t believe she was about to say this. But….
“I love you, too,” she whispered, a new, sweeter feeling flaming in her achy chest at finally saying aloud what she’d never even dared to think to herself.
He looked at her. And stared at her some more. And then he did something she’d thought he’d never do.
Smiled.
So, it was official. All that stuff they hadn’t been saying because Bohdan was leaving.
Tonight, they didn’t bother with the usual pretense. Her leaving and driving her Corvette to the back of his apartment building, then him walking across the street, as soon as he saw the light come on in his window. They walked through the main gym, hand in hand. Not caring who saw them. Just never wanting to let each other go.
Bohdan wanted her to come to Baltimore with him. Start a new life, far away from Detroit where no one knew them.
And she wanted that, too. It felt even more thrilling than a wrestling match to agree. It wasn’t something Wilma was used to, agreeing with a man because she wanted to—not just because he was the self-proclaimed baddest damn wolf that ever damn lived.
Still holding hands, they shared three burgers and two orders of fries, and they made plans. Lots of them.
But eventually everything on the plate was done. Bohdan wanted to drive her home. But she shook her head. She could go home tonight, pack a bag, and sneak out in the wee hours of the morning, she explained to him. But not if she was sighted coming home with a hu—ah, person her kind didn’t know.
“You will have to explain to me about your kind when we are husband and wife,” he said. Then still holding her hand, he guided her out of the booth.
“We meet tomorrow at this same booth, five a.m. exactly, tak?”
“Tak,” she agreed quietly. Liking this first-time feeling of being a girl with real choices.
He walked her through the cold night, to the car she’d parked, right in front of the diner this time, no hiding. The meter was blinking, because they’d been here more than an hour. But there was no ticket on the window of her Vette.
It felt like a sign. Something to take solace in, when they finally let go of each other’s hand, knowing that they’d see each other again in less than twelve hours.
Yes, she was really going to do this. After twenty years of living under her father’s thumb, she was going to run off with her human. And never look back.
It felt right. Like the rightest decision she’d eve
r made her.
Funny, Bodhan had made her a woman in more ways than one. And as she let go of his hand and got into her car, she felt confident that all their dreams, all their plans could come true.
Brave. She felt brave now. Because of him. Because of the things he’d taught her both inside and outside the ring.
And for the first time in her entire life, she was looking forward to becoming somebody’s wife.
9
Rafes
What had he done?
Rafes had muted the VR meeting before making a confident show of walking with Myrna back to his drone. But the inside of his head was a fucking mess.
The wolf growled with approval and desire as it laid out in raw, explicit detail exactly how many ways he wanted to mount Myrna. All night long. But at the same time, images of a bleeding Jillian flashed through his mind, cold and chilling.
He couldn’t have a repeat of that.
Especially this close to an election.
It was a damn struggle to keep the thing inside of him on its leash, when it came to this she-wolf. He could feel the wolf, prowling beneath his skin, ready to pounce the moment Rafes showed any sort of weakness.
And so he walked beside Myrna in stiff silence to the drone, his human knowing only two things for sure. One: he couldn’t give her up, and Two: he had no idea whatsoever how to keep her.
As if reading his thoughts, Craig and Arik, intercepted them halfway to the drone. “Right this way, Mx…ah…,” Craig said, struggling for the correct surname. He shifted his eyes right, a classic sign that he was searching WolfNet for any mention of her last name.
“She doesn’t have a last name,” Rafes told his guard to save him the search. “Where she comes from they didn’t use them.”
Myrna wrapped both her hands around his. “If you’d like, you can call me by the family name of Nightwolf, since I am fated to become our fenrir’s Queen.”
She peered up at him adoringly, her smile too wide to be mistaken for anything but genuine. Which made his breath catch in his throat with the realization that she liked him. Liked him for reasons simple and uncalculated. Because the gates had sent her to him. Because she trusted him, no proof of integrity needed. Because they shared even a little bit of a common past. And unlike him, she seemed to have no reservations whatsoever about their match.
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 48