Em was something called gender fluid, and it had taken a combined lesson with both Myrna’s culture and English tutor for Myrna to fully understand that Em wished to neither be seen nor addressed as male or female and therefore used the word “they” to refer to “themself”— “which wasn’t considered a word when I was born,” Myrna’s English tutor told her. “But now it’s in the dictionary.”
All confusion aside, Myrna liked Em, because they preferred to work out in nature behind the house and unlike every single other person on her “Project Fair Lady” team, didn’t treat her as entirely hopeless.
They complimented Myrna on her muscle condition at their first session and insisted that all Myrna had to do was keep up with them to stay in great shape.
And now, the morning of the End of Summer Gala, they were whooping with wonder because Myrna had thrown the dagger she'd taken from the kitchen to use as her woman’s knife and felled a rabbit on the other side of the Wolf House’s back lawn.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe you did that!” Em said, when they accompanied her to collect the dead rabbit. Then with wondrous eyes, they asked, “Can you teach me?”
“Can’t believe you did that either,” a voice said behind Myrna, before she could answer Em.
Myrna froze, because she didn’t just hear Rafes, she could also smell him now, his natural snow and mountain scent, underneath a sheen of handsome cologne and what she’d come to think of as the technology scent every wolf with a biosystem carried in this time period. He was here. Her fated mate was actually here in person.
And this is when she had to raise her eyes to both her mother’s and father’s gods.
Because three moons! Three moons of non-stop hard work, and the one time her fated mate decided to visit in the flesh, he’d found her throwing a knife like the wild Viking The Joshua Tree had declared her to be at the beginning of “Project Fair Lady.”
And “oh my gosh,” as her mother used to say, she could feel the wicked roil of her wolf inside her stomach. Once again heating her body with the strange stirring she’d never known before Rafesson. Demanding that she climb her fenrir once more, take what was hers, press her lips to his for another one of the kisses that continued to haunt her waking thoughts, like a feast day meal only tasted but not yet eaten.
Patience, she warned her eager wolf before turning around to face him with the dead rabbit’s still warm body in her hand. She then used everything she’d learned in her culture class, to paste a smile upon her face as she said, “Hello, fenrir mine. How fare thee?”
* * *
Rafes
He had taken her by surprise. Rafes could tell by the way the smile trembled on her lips, as if she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and was hoping to God, he didn’t notice the crumbs.
He noticed the crumbs. And a lot more….
It should have turned him off. She looked every bit the part of the “Wild Viking Princess” as she’d been dubbed on WolfNet. One hand covered in rabbit blood, her hair more nest than braid, her sweaty smell like… God help him, nothing he’d ever scented. And why the hell had her room decided to manufacture such skimpy workout clothes for her? Yeah, it had been a record hot August, but that only made the running shorts and sports tank she wore cling to her damp body.
Her wet and sweaty body, which he could just imagine wrapped around him again, her mewling into his mouth as he fucked her as hard as he’d been imagining these many weeks when he’d laid alone in his cold Colorado bed with nothing but his hand and thoughts of her naked body to help him fall asleep.
You’d think time would have lessened her effect on him, but his wolf slammed into his chest at the first smell of all those pheromones, desperately craving her. Meanwhile, the smart fabric at his crotch was once again having to work overtime.
“President Nightwolf!”
The voice of her trainer, who wore a tank with a gender fluid heart flag on it, ripped him away from his predatory thoughts.
“Wow, it’s so great to meet you! I just love your fated mate.”
His wolf reared inside him, wanting to rip out the throat of the gender-fluid, registered asexual, The Joshua Tree had hired as her personal trainer.
And Rafes must have let a little of the wolf slip out, because they back pedaled, quickly adding, “Not love her like that. But I just think she’s great. And in great condition. You’re very lucky.”
Rafes regarded them for a beat, then said, “And so are you. Apparently, my mate is teaching you now as opposed to the other way around.”
Not surprisingly, Myrna’s trainer declared the session over in the next breath.
“You’re going to look wonderful in your dress,” they assured her. “Knock ‘em dead, Audrey.”
She laughed and wished Em a good day.
And though Rafes had stayed away—purposefully stayed away—for the last three months, he found himself envious. Wanting the sun of her gaze back on his face, more than he wanted his next breath of air.
As if in answer to his intense desire to have her attention, she said, “Hello, Rafesson!” her eyes shining with happiness. “You are really here! By the Fenrir Wolf, is it possible, you are even more pleasing to my eyes than when we last did meet?”
Until that moment, he honestly had no idea what the expression “like a school girl,” alluded to. But the way his stomach fluttered at her words, he now got it loud and clear.
And his wolf. It stalked inside his body’s cage, waiting, watching, and craving with growling need. God, his wolf wanted to attack her. Wanted to fuck her right here on the Wolf House’s back lawn, not caring who saw them as all the workers set up for tonight’s annual End of Summer Gala—which was really just an excuse to formally raise lots of money at a time of the year when donors were sick and tired of being hit up for donations. Which meant, grabbing her and carrying her up to his room like a caveman wouldn’t be a good look, and would probably make WolfNet. He could see the headlines now. “Wild Viking Turns President Nightwolf Into A Total Savage, Too. Vote Lowell.”
But the wolf didn’t give a good damn about how it would appear if he carried her off. It growled inside of him. Demanding what had been withheld from it for so long.
And his human…dear fuck…his normally hyper rational human wanted her, too.
His wolf growled, and his cock pulsed.
But somehow Rafes forced himself to stay in control, “Audrey?” he asked, pretending that she wasn’t driving both his human and his wolf crazy with lust.
* * *
Myrna
Myrna’s heart sank when Rafesson neither returned her greeting nor her compliment—which she’d learned was basic social etiquette when one received a flattering tribute from another.
So, he was not nearly as excited to see her as she was to see him, she realized with a self-conscious pang. Mayhap because she was covered in sweat and wore her kinky hair in a sloppy braid, hastily constructed before she met Em for their late morning session.
“It is a nickname they have given me,” Myrna answered nonetheless. “Because the project is named after a musical, in which a dead actress named Audrey Hepburn plays a woman who must be made over as I have been for the last three months. Have you ever seen this entertainment?”
“No.” An unreadable look passed over Rafesson’s face. One which Myrna could not translate even after her EI training.
“I confess I have not either,” Myrna answered. “But The Joshua Tree often plays the soundtrack while he is testing out new styles and looks on me and thus can I sing many of the songs from memory now.”
Rafesson’s lips twitched. A tightening (annoyance) or a lift (amusement)—she could not tell. And though her EI coach had warned her that Rafesson was notoriously hard to read, Myrna found herself wishing for…well, more than this. More than he was giving her, which had been nothing so far, but cool hellos at hologram breakfasts and unreadable looks she couldn’t quite translate.
“How are you?” she aske
d, falling back on her social etiquette lessons.
“Nervous,” Rafes answered, glancing around the garden where many workers set up tables and chairs for the gala. “There’s a lot riding on tonight.”
“This I know,” Myrna answered earnestly. “And I have prepared my very best for it.”
Several beats went by before Rafesson finally said, “I know you are trying your best. Thank you for that.”
His tone was cool and measured, just as it had been in the many speeches and interviews she’d been given to watch. Funny, her wolf went crazy inside of her whenever he appeared, even if he was just a hologram it couldn’t touch. Yet at times like this, Myrna had to wonder if Rafesson even possessed a wolf. He was so cold and unmoving. Like the dangerous mountains of ice that sat out in the distance beyond their village’s bay.
“I should go now. Prepare for tonight,” he said abruptly, as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.
“I, as well,” she answered, swallowing her hurt. “The Joshua Tree still has much to do in completion of Project Fair Lady. Also, must I skin and prepare the rabbit I felled for mid-day lunch.”
“What?” Rafesson asked, showing emotion for the first time since his arrival.
“The rabbit I have felled. I must skin it,” she repeated.
His head tilted. “Why are you skinning your own rabbit when we have kitchen staff?”
“Oh, I did attempt to bring the rabbit to them the first time, but I was told that they did not skin such creatures and that if I wished to eat the ‘cute little backyard animals’ I killed, I must handle the job myself. Indeed, they would not allow me to set foot in the kitchen with one of the animals I felled. I believe it is called a squirrel—though it was a size bigger than the ones in my land. Also, gray instead of red….”
She trailed off, when Rafesson finally let a new expression cross his unemotional face. Apparently, he could easily be read under the right circumstances. Or in this case the wrong circumstances. Because somehow though he’d only been here for a small number of the time measurement her tutors called minutes, she had once again, managed to, as her English teacher had taught her to say, put her foot in her mouth.
“Are you sure you can handle tonight?” Rafesson asked, lowering his voice.
Myrna shook her head. “No, Rafesson. I would like the chance to please you,” she answered, raising pleading eyes to his solemn ones. “I promise I have trained well for tonight and will not, as my mother would say, let you down.”
Rafesson opened his mouth. Perhaps to deny her request. But luckily for her, a voice called out, “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”
The Joshua Tree came running across the lawn with two attendants flanking each side. “President Nightwolf,” he said with a short wave, before turning back to Myrna. “C’mon, Audrey, we only have seven hours left before go time! And believe me, we need every minute.”
Myrna let them pull her away, but she could feel Rafesson’s gaze on her as she got dragged across the back lawn.
And she had a feeling it wasn’t because he found her as pleasing to his eye as she found him.
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15
Rafes
What the hell had he been thinking?
Rafes was still cursing himself seven hours later as he waited at the bottom of the stairs for the “Wild Viking Princess,” who’d been tanking his numbers in the polls. He was slow-rolling her biosystem installation and had already given the order to put the equivalent of child safety locks on her smart room, so that she wouldn’t see what they were saying about her. He didn’t want her hurt or made despondent by their remarks.
But he was now trailing Dean Lowell in the polls, which didn’t make his decision to choose her over Camille feel any smarter. And that raw, visceral reaction he'd had to her earlier… that didn’t bode well at all.
He couldn’t afford to lose himself to his wolf, but he also couldn’t hide Myrna away as he’d been sorely tempted to after that squirrel and rabbit conversation.
He should never have agreed to this plan, he thought, becoming more agitated the longer he waited. He should have realized that Myrna just didn’t have enough time, skills, or talent to make so large a transforma—
He stopped, his heart firing off shots inside his chest, when she appeared at the top of the stairs.
Holy fuck!
His mouth dried, and his heart flipped as he took in the sight of Myrna in a sleek black evening gown. The dress clung to her curves, but in a subtle way, not a take me home after you transfer credits into my account sort of way.
No, she couldn’t look any further from a prostitute, or a Viking princess for that matter. If not for her red hair, he might not have even recognized her. The morning’s nest braid had been undone, straightened and pulled back into a sleek updo. And her flawless make up, made her look more like a dignified duchess than the overly sincere huntress he’d found romping around his backyard in a skimpy workout outfit.
A pair of delicate heels had been fitted around the wide bare feet he remembered from when she landed in this time period, rendering them dainty and narrow. Like…like…Cinderella, he realized, his wolf going unnaturally quiet inside of him as she descended the stairs.
She stopped on the second to last step, which put them face to face, as if they were of equal height and allowed him to look straight into her hopeful brown eyes. “Do you like it?” she asked, her voice soft and shy, as opposed to its usual Viking fierce.
“You look…” He shook his head, still overcome with shock. “… just stunning tonight.”
For this, she gave him a dazzling smile, revealing whitened teeth. “I’m glad my appearance does please you now, as yours pleases me.”
He squinted, because it sounded like she didn’t know just how attractive he found her, even before the eighty’s movie makeover.
“Mr. President! Mr. President! Is now a good time to get a few pre-gala pictures?”
Rafes found it hard to look away from Myrna in that moment, but somehow he managed to nod his assent to the Wolf House photographer who’d approached them with an old-fashioned Nikon from the early 2000s, hanging from his neck.
“Stay right there, looking into each other’s eyes,” the photographer instructed. “That’s perfect.”
The photographer began snapping the first sanctioned pictures of the president and his fated mate that the world would see. And Rafes had a very good feeling that President Robot would for once come across as truly authentic as he smiled into the eyes of his future wife.
“Myrna, there you are!” his mother’s voice called out, disrupting the moment.
And there went all his good feelings.
“Want me to take photos of the family?” the photographer asked.
“No, maybe just get some pre-party pictures,” Rafes answered.
Too bad his team had also insisted on him still inviting his mother to the gala in an effort to dispel all the negative press from her continued denouncements of the Black Box project. Rafes highly regretted giving in as he watched his mother approach, with her mother, Wilma, on her arm.
The two, he noticed, looked like opposite emotion cards. Wilma shuffled along her eyes still dull and glazed, even though his grandfather’s mate bond scent had faded more than a year ago—maybe because of it, Rafes thought with a sympathetic pang, remembering how close and well-matched his grandparents had been before his untimely death.
On the other hand, his mother appeared like she’d just inhaled a whole box of nails to spit at Rafes before showing up. So, it was probably a good bet that she knew Nago had given him the go-ahead to box up both the Alaska gates and the gate for the mange Mississippi kingdom Nago now shared with his pregnant mate. No wonder his youngest brother had messaged him with some lame excuse about not making it
to tonight’s gala and had instead said his mate, Halle, and he would come up for lunch tomorrow afternoon. The, when Mom’s not there, hadn’t been in Nago’s biomessage, but Rafes could hear it clearly now when his mother stopped in front of them with a killing look.
“I can’t believe you got to your little brother. I should have known you’d do something like this while I was distracted with Knud.”
Nago was hardly little. He was bigger and taller than both his older triplets, not to mention the brilliant engineer behind the black gate. Also, it had been Rafes, not her, who’d spent much of the last three months cleaning up her prodigal son’s huge fuck-up with Layla Rustanov.
But in typical Alisha fashion, she didn’t give him a chance to defend himself before turning a much kinder gaze on Myrna.
“It’s so good to see you, sweetie. You look gorgeous!” she said, pulling her into a hug. “I know you’ve been checking in with your brothers, but they’re not exactly great at updating me. They still have to call Ola in to help them connect their finger rings whenever I send them a Face-to-Face request.”
Myrna laughed. “If not for the guidance of the Astrid hologram in my rooms, I might not be able to place such calls myself.”
“Well, you’ve only been here three months,” his mother pointed out. “Those two brothers of yours have zero excuses.”
The two shared a good-natured laugh at FJ’s and Olafr’s expense. Then Alisha took hold of her mother’s arm again and said, “Well, I supposed we should get this travesty over with. I plan to give as many Lupine Council representatives as I can find a piece of my mind, including that backstabbing Alaska representative of ours. Then I’ll be leaving before the big speech, so that I don’t have to sit through whatever pack of lies my son decides to spout to sell that backwards gate project of his. But before that, I’ll definitely need a drink to get through tonight. C’mon, Myrna, let’s go find the bar.”
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 53