“No! Please don’t think you had anything to do with my leaving,” she said, though technically he did, since his “hooking up with human chicks” was what prompted Kenny to demand she leave the club.
“Really, I’m tired,” she said, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so awake. Talking to him, from the very first moment they’d clasped hands in greeting, had felt like waking up from her sleepy, well-ordered life on a roller coaster. And now that he was standing here in front of her hotel, sleep was the furthest thing from Janelle’s mind. “But, um.... I was thinking of having a cup of hot chocolate before I went up to my room. Would you, ah… like to join me?”
2
RAFE’S friend, Janelle, seemed to be good at covering up her real feelings. If she was nervous about sitting in a hotel bar with a wolf she just met, sipping hot chocolate, she didn’t show it. He, on the other hand, was nervous as hell.
He couldn’t believe he was here, sitting close enough to touch the most beautiful she-wolf he’d ever met. He could just imagine how the other guys on his team would laugh if they saw him now, sweating bullets over a virgin she-wolf after all the human girls he’d gone through during his three years at Denver U.
But here he was, a senior in college, Mr. Big Wolf on campus, and he could barely talk to this girl who’d invited him to sit down with her for a drink.
“So you play football with Rafe,” she said after they’d received their steaming, fragrant mugs. She gave him another of her twinkling smiles, and he had to admit her game was tight. Like he could maybe see her hosting one of those morning talk shows his grandma loved so much.
“How do you like playing on a team together?” she asked. “It must be nice to share the field with your friend.”
Mag shrugged. “He’s a receiver and I’m a linebacker, so we don’t really spend that much field time together.”
She squinted a little, and a cute but confused look came over her face.
“We’re on two opposite sides of the team. He’s offense. I’m defense. The only time we ever play together is at practice and usually I’m trying to tackle him.”
“Oh, I get it now.” Her smile turned sheepish. “I suppose I should pay more attention when my father watches Seahawk games.”
He inclined his head. “You from Alaska?”
That question seemed to throw her. “Yes, yes, I am,” she answered.
He nodded. “Yeah, I should’ve guessed. You smell like Alaska and your dad roots for the Seahawks. Sounds like an Alaska wolf to me. I’m from Alaska, too.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, but she seemed tense now, as if she were bracing herself for something.
He’d never met an African-American wolf from Alaska before, and that made him even more curious about her. “Where do you live?”
“Wolf Lake,” she answered carefully.
“You’re from the kingdom town… oh…” He took a big interest in his napkin. So that confirmed it. She was out of his league. Way out of his league. Ever since the official King of Alaska got the state pack involved in the very lucrative oil business, only the richest wolves could afford to live in Wolf Lake, the kingdom town located in interior Alaska. From what he’d heard, you needed a plane just to get to the lake the town was named after. And then, if you didn’t have a floater plane, you either had to row or walk across the large body of water, which took up the one side of the kingdom town that wasn’t already surrounded by mountains.
“Yes,” she said. “The lake should be freezing over soon, and we’re already gearing up for the Arctic Wolf Games. Have you ever been?”
He peeled a strip of his napkin. “People from where I live aren’t exactly invited to stuff like that.”
“People from where you live,” she repeated, then she realized out loud, “Oh, are you part of the Inu-Amaruq pack?”
Mag flexed his hands around the torn napkin. Inu-Amaruq—literally Bad Wolf. They were what used to be called a gypsy pack, back before Alaska officially joined the North American Lupine Union, and back before people, including the Inu-Amaruq themselves, had started taking offense at the word gypsy. Like their nomadic ancestors, they still followed the fish and game and built igloos for hunting—though only for hunting. When it came time to sleep, they hauled their asses back to their RVs like any sane hunter would if he had a choice.
Also, like their ancestors, they considered their own pack alpha their king, refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the state king or abide by the rules of the North American Lupine Council. All he knew of the kingdom town was it was hard to get to, even by their nomadic standards. He wouldn’t have even been able to say for sure who the current state king was, though Rafe had mentioned when they first met that his father, the King of Colorado, and the Alaska king were best friends who’d played football together for Denver U.
When Rafe realized Mag knew absolutely nothing about his own state’s royal family or politics, he’d dropped the subject, a renaissance wolf realizing he was speaking with someone who’d only known hunting and fishing and, if necessary, selling drugs and/or thieving, his entire life.
“Yeah, I’m from Inu-Amaruq,” he said. “But we don’t call it that. We call it…” He told her the words, using the dialect of their tribe.
“What does it mean in English?”
“Freedom,” he answered, refusing to be ashamed of where he was from, even if it sent her running for the hills, like it would have a lot of nice Alaska girls. “Technically Freedom Town, which I know sounds strange since we’re always moving around. But we call ourselves a town because even if we’re on the move, that don’t mean we aren’t a community, you know. And we call ourselves Freedom, because we make the rules. We’re not living under some wolves in suits who probably don’t even know how to hunt.”
“Freedom Town,” she repeated. She seemed to like the taste of the words in her mouth. “I’ve always wondered about Freedom Town.”
This, Mag sensed, was true curiosity, and not her just trying to make conversation. “You got questions about my pack, you can ask ‘em. Long as you’re cool with me asking you about the kingdom town. You go first.”
“Okay,” she said with a grin. “First question: when you fly home from college, how do you find your pack if you’re always traveling around?”
He chuckled. “We got satellite phones. I call my brother before I buy my ticket and he tells me where he thinks they’re going to be when I come through. Then when I get to the airport closest to that place, he sends me the GPS coordinates for wherever they’re at that day. It’s kind of complicated. Too complicated. I’m going home with Rafe for winter break this year.”
She took in what he’d just told her with a slow shake of her head. “Wow, I can’t even imagine,” she said. “Okay, it’s your turn.”
“Rafe told me the Colorado kingdom town has an invisible gate up in its mountains. Like a time gate, and he says wolves can travel through them if they have the right spell. I called him a liar, but Grady said Oklahoma has one, too. He said all the states do and that’s how the werewolves know where to establish their kingdom towns. I think they’re pulling my chain, but since you’re from the Alaska kingdom town…”
She chuckled a little. “No, actually it’s absolutely true. It’s the—I mean, I hear it’s the royal family’s job to greet any visitors who come through. It’s only gone off twice since I’ve been living in Wolf Lake. Both times it was she-wolves who’d traveled through time to meet their fated mates. But from what I hear, the Colorado gate gets a lot of activity. Apparently, Colorado wolves are way more attractive to the winds of destiny than Alaska wolves.”
Mag laughed incredulously. “Yeah, I guess so. I still can barely believe they were telling me the truth, though. I better apologize for calling them ten different kinds of liars.”
“Well, that would be the polite thing to do.” She smiled at him again. “I wish I could tell you more about the gate. If my sister, Alisha, were here, she�
�d be able to tell you all sorts of stuff about it. She’s in grad school to become a history professor, and I know she’d have so many questions about Freedom Town, too. Better than the ones I have—for instance, is it true your pack still get face tattoos whenever you kill someone?”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, his thoughts going to a dark place as his father’s heavily tattooed face floated across his mind’s eye.
“But you don’t have any face tattoos,” she said.
Her observation brought him back. “No, I don’t.”
She grinned. “So you’re safe!”
“I’ve been called a lot of things before. Safe ain’t one of them,” he answered ruefully.
“I don’t know,” she said, taking another sip of her hot chocolate. “We’re sitting here and you’re from Bad Wolf and you’re like this big, strong football player—you look like someone’s beta—but I feel safe with you.”
Her words warmed him, even more than the hot chocolate. “You are safe with me. You’re Rafe’s friend and you’re nice, and you’re… really beautiful.” He admitted he’d been affected by her looks, even though he knew it was a thin line between admiring a girl and really creeping her out. “I’d never hurt you or let anyone else hurt you.”
Her eyes softened and she looked at him for a long, long time before asking, “Is it also true what they say about male wolves from Bad Wolf? That you’re not bound by Lupine Council law, so you guys can have sex with a she-wolf before she goes into heat?”
Mag considered lying to her. He hadn't thought about it much back when he'd been living in Alaska, when he'd slept with several willing she-wolves, not even aware such a law existed until he came to Colorado. Rafe had let him know about it during a wolf mixer, told Mag he could flirt with she-wolves in Colorado but if he wanted to go any further than that, he'd need to stick to human girls. It had seemed like a fucked up rule to him considering she-wolves couldn't contract sexually transmitted human diseases or get pregnant if they weren't in heat. Why not let the girl wolves have some fun before they mated up, too?
But now that Janelle-with her perfect hair, her sweet smile, and her twinkling eyes was asking him about sex in Freedom Town, the fact that he'd slept with several unheated females before landing at Denver U. made him feel less like a guy having a lot of fun before he settled down and more like a sleaze.
Still, he didn’t want to lie to her. So he took a chance and told the bright and shiny girl sitting across from him the truth: “Yeah, that’s true, too.”
She set down her cup. “Have you ever slept with an unheated female?”
“Yeah, I have,” he said, and he braced himself, wondering if she’d immediately get up and leave or keep making small talk until she finished the hot chocolate and could say goodnight without it being a thing.
But then she looked up at him and said, in a hushed voice, “Would you, um… would you sleep with me?”
Mag went completely still. He must have heard her wrong. Either that or he’d totally misunderstood what she was asking him.
“What?” His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears.
She’d been cool as a cucumber before, but now he could feel the nervous energy coming off of her in waves. Her delicate fingers clenched and unclenched around her cocoa mug. “Would you have sex with me? Would you take my virginity tonight?” Then as if she’d just remembered her manners she added, “Please?”
3
NEARLY all of her life, Janelle had been trained not to reveal what she was really feeling. She was always expected to be poised, calm, and collected, no matter where she went. Other girls showed up at the kingdom town’s schoolhouse with tousled hair, in jeans and t-shirts, complaining about alarm clocks and parents who would not let them sleep in.
Not Janelle. She got up at five, and put effort into picking out the perfect outfit. She ruthlessly covered any blotchy spots on her face with MAC concealer, then either flat-ironed her hair or smoothed product through each individual curl, so it wouldn’t look frizzy. The result being she’d never arrived anywhere at any time looking anything less than perfect, like a magazine ad that had decided to live out its existence in the real world.
However, she couldn’t keep up the façade as she slipped the key card into her hotel room door with shaking hands. The clunk of the lock releasing mirrored the way her stomach dropped. Like the roller coaster ride she’d found herself on had finally reached the top of its first peak and dropped her over it with maniacal glee.
The pageant organizers had provided her with very nice accommodations—a spacious corner room with a sofa, cherry wood coffee table, and a long desk lining the wall. But it wasn’t a suite, and when she stepped into the room with Mag behind her, the sight of the bed greeted them on the other side. A looming presence covered in Frette linens.
Mag, however, didn’t seem to be as intimidated by the bed as she was. He looked around her room with obvious admiration in his eyes as he took in the luxury accommodations. Unlike the wolves she usually kept company with, Janelle noticed he tended to wear his feelings on his face. Naked, for the whole world to see. It was apt that he hailed from a town called Freedom, she thought. She wondered what it would be like to openly express how you were feeling without thought or care to how others perceived you.
“Um, the bathroom’s right over there,” she said, pointing behind him. “If you need it.”
She purposefully turned her back on him and went to drop her purse on the room’s burnt orange Victorian sofa so he couldn’t see her face while she tried to pull her usually unflappable composure back around her like a shield. But that only made it worse, because now she was even closer to the bed. The bed that was practically screaming, “This is really happening! This is really, really happening!”
“I don’t need it,” he said behind her. But she didn’t hear him move any further into the room.
Breathe, breathe… she said to herself.
Inviting a wolf she’d just met up to her room wasn’t a very princess-like thing to do, but it was also probably the only opportunity she’d have to do something like this before her heat night with Jeffrey. What were the chances of her ever meeting a wolf who was not only willing to break the Lupine Council law about sleeping with unheated females, but also had no idea who she was?
If she didn’t do this, the first time she had sex would be with Jeffrey. An image of the Wyoming prince floated across her eyes: tall and almost as thin as she was, with his fashionably cut blond hair, his smile, which seemed more like an upturned sneer than an actual expression of happiness.
Janelle suddenly recalled the comment Alisha had made when Jeffrey had visited the Alaska kingdom town for the first time. They were lined up, waiting for him on the dock to begin the traditional greeting ceremony for visiting royalty. He’d let her cousin, Vince, do all the work, rowing the umiak boat, while he sat in the back, looking put out that it took so much effort to get to the Alaska kingdom house. Alisha had leaned over and whispered in her ear, “And the part of King Joffrey in the Game of Wolves goes to… Wyoming!”
Janelle hadn't laughed at Alisha's Jeffrey/Joffrey comparison then. In fact, she had let a rare hint of annoyance creep into her voice when she'd told her sister they wouldn't be doing a traditional greeting after all, due to Alisha's inability to complete even the most basic of princess obligations without snarky side comments. And Janelle most certainly wasn't laughing about it now.
She swallowed back her fear. What she was about to do with Mag violated Lupine Council law and her pledge agreement with Jeffrey, which had a clause pertaining to her virginity. She had agreed to both the clause and Jeffrey's pledge in service of her crown, to honor her parents, but she needed something… just one thing for herself.
She drew up to her full height and forced herself to turn around and face Mag, her princess smile in full effect. “I’ve never done this before. Could you walk me through it?”
Mag studied Janelle for a few seconds, his eyes narro
w and shrewd. For a moment it seemed like he could see right through her. But in the end he said, “How about if I get naked. Then you get naked. And we go from there.”
He didn’t wait for her to agree or disagree before he started taking off his clothes. He tossed his motorcycle jacket on the sofa. The rest of his clothes and his boots, which he kicked under the cherry wood coffee table, until he was completely nude, soon followed it. Not one stitch of clothing.
Janelle’s breath actually caught in her throat. He was beyond impressive. “You said I was beautiful downstairs, but you’re…” Her hands lit up with an unfamiliar urge. “May I… may I touch you?”
He seemed amused by the question. “Yeah, sure,” he answered.
Before she could think too hard about what she was doing, she went for it, running her hands over his rippled abs, watching the way her French-manicured nails contrasted with his faintly burnished skin. It was like touching the muscle car her cousin Vince had bought the summer before. Like Mag’s body had a powerful engine humming inside it, threatening to rev up at any time.
“Touch me as long as you need to,” he said. “As long as it takes for you to stop being scared.”
She wanted to politely deny being scared, it was on the tip of her tongue to do so, but his skin… she couldn’t get over it, such a soft contrast to the solid muscle underneath. She let her hands run up his body to his pectorals, which flexed underneath the pads of her fingers, as if in greeting. Her fingers then found his arms, the biceps prominent, firm, and large, even in their state of rest. She wondered what they would feel like if he flexed them. Maybe like rocks covered in silk.
Her eyes traveled down his body until she spotted the other part of him. Long and thick and nearly standing up between them.
“You can touch me anywhere but there,” he said. “This will be over way too soon if you touch me there.”
A tiny flare of disappointment went off inside Janelle as she moved her hands to his hips, finally settling beneath the hard V of muscle, which ironically, seemed to be pointing her toward the one thing on his body she wasn’t allowed to touch.
Wolf and Punishment (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1) Page 2