Wilder

by Lena North

  “Babe,” he said. “My mother died which meant that the choice of what kind of mother I’d have was taken out of her hands. Your mother had that choice and the way she played her hand was wrong. Stupid, inconsiderate and just plain wrong. You get that, right?”

  “Of course I do,” I replied. “But Mac… I had a choice too. I realized years ago that I could walk through life being pissed at her, letting her actions sour my life and taint who I am. Or I could choose to let her go. Let myself be the person I wanted to be, without bitterness.”

  He watched me calmly, but I could see that he was thinking this through, so I added, “Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. It hurt. But it was necessary and, I think, healthy.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I guess I did the same, sort of. Never thought about it like that, though.”

  We were silent for a long while and then he suddenly stretched out to touch my cheek softly.

  “When we are back home, will you have dinner with me?”

  Oh yes, I absolutely wanted that, but I didn’t want to seem too eager, so I replied a little bit cheekily, “Will you clean your condo before cooking for me?”

  His eyes lit up with laughter then.

  “Figured I’d just take you out for pizza or something, but yeah... For you, Wilder, I’ll make an effort,” he said, and I smiled.

  “Then yes. I would love to have dinner with you, Mac.”

  My insides tingled, and I grinned at him.

  Then we promptly got into a huge fight because we started talking about how to deal with the things my bird had shown me. Mac started it off by highhandedly announcing that after I’d gone to bed, he would snoop around to see what else he could find out. I told him that he would in no way do something like that. My plan was that he would drink wine with Paolo, I would again blame fatigue and then swiftly not go to bed and instead snoop around to see what I could find out. He immediately protested and unwisely declared that he had promised Hawker to keep me safe and that I would stay in our room, so he knew where I was.

  Keep me safe? He wanted to know where I was? What a dickhead.

  That led to a lot of yelling, at first on my part, but soon enough his voice was close to a roar. After a while, I got fed up and decided to end our argument, and maybe make a small point at the same time, so I took a quick step forward and swung him around, using the strength in my legs and bumping him with my hip to add leverage.

  He landed on his back with a loud oomph. I got on top of him, blocked one of his arms with a knee and made a fake punch toward his throat.

  “Protect me?” I smirked.

  He glared at me but slowly the anger on his face was replaced by humor. Then he swung us both around, and he wasn’t trained in martial arts but had clearly been in fights before. He was also a lot stronger than me. I found myself on my back, but he cushioned my fall with his arms and landed on top of me, somehow managing to keep most of his weight off me.

  “Babe,” he chuckled.

  I scowled at him even though it was hard to stay mad because he was so clearly amused and us rolling around on the ground like little kids were kind of ridiculous.

  “Compromise?” he asked gently, surprising me.

  I hadn’t thought he had that in him, but he apparently did so I nodded.

  “We pretend that we want privacy and head down to the beach with some blankets and pillows. Then I head back to the house to look around, and you look around in the village?”

  I thought about that for a while.

  “I should go to the house? It’s a bigger risk to be seen there, but if I meet someone I could just say that I was curious about the house my mother spent so much time in?”

  “No. Bird is here and will be on the lookout. She can’t talk to you so can’t warn you, but she can warn me,” he said immediately.

  He had a point, and I figured I had to give in.

  “I don’t like it at all, but yeah. Okay. That’s how we do it,” I grumbled.

  Suddenly he kissed me, and my whole body softened, melting into him. He was on his elbows, and one of his hands was behind my neck, tilting my head back just a little. I wrapped my arms around him, wishing he didn’t have his heavy leather jacket on so I could caress the beautiful falcon on his back.

  After a while, he pulled back and murmured, “Jesus, Wilder. Kissed so many girls in my life, but none of them tasted like you. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of your sweet mouth.”

  I blinked, not knowing what to do with the words he just gave me. Hearing him talk about girls he kissed while I still had the taste of him in my mouth was just wrong, but at the same time, it sounded like he was planning to build something that lasted with me and I wanted that so much.

  “Okay,” I said and mentally kicked myself for how inane I sounded.

  “Okay,” he chuckled, apparently finding my confusion amusing.

  Then he kissed me lightly, pulled me to my feet, and we walked back to Marshes to have dinner with Paolo and set our plan in motion.

  And there we were, strolling toward the beach, carrying blankets and pillows. Mac had charmed the housekeeper into giving him several candles, and Paolo had winked as he handed me a bottle of sparkling wine, saying that he would go to bed early but that the back door would be unlocked.

  As soon as we were out of sight, we walked faster, hand in hand until we were some distance away from the houses. A shiver passed down my spine, and I listened carefully in case someone was following us but I heard nothing. The sky was dark with heavy clouds and the evening breeze had settled, so the night was completely silent, almost as if it was holding its breath. We turned away from the beach and found a secluded spot in the dunes. I spread a blanket out and tossed the pillows in a pile on it while Mac placed the candles in the sand. Still without talking, we walked back toward the village. The only way to enter was via the beach or through the main gate, so when we approached, we turned back down on the beach.

  We stopped when we reached the fence. Mac squeezed my hand and leaned his forehead to mine.

  “Careful,” he breathed.

  “You too,” I replied softly.

  I felt him nod, and then he disappeared into the darkness. I stood there for a while, listening but not hearing his footsteps. Then I pulled out a black bandana Mac had given me and covered my hair. We couldn’t do much about our pale skin, but we’d both dressed in black jeans and tees and left our jackets by the blankets.

  We had picked out a few houses that I would approach. My goal was mostly to find out who met with whom, and if I could hear anything then it would be a bonus. Mac had told me sternly to not try to get into the houses, and I’d laughed then. That would be burglary, of sorts, and I was reckless sometimes, but I was certainly not that stupid.

  There were no lights on in the first house. I looked at it from a distance but decided not to approach it because a dark house meant I couldn’t see if anyone was standing inside looking out. Instead, I skirted around a few houses until I got to my second goal from the back side. The lawn was muddy, and I walked carefully along the fence to leave as few footprints as possible. There was no need for me to walk all the way up to the house, anyway. It was old, like most of the houses in Marshes seemed to be, and the windows were small, but they’d remodeled the side facing the garden, and put in huge floor to ceiling sliding glass doors. They had several lights on, and inside a man and a woman was standing, closely together. Then he grabbed her, and they started kissing. I raised my brows when I saw them. The man had introduced me to his wife at the dinner Paolo had held, and it hadn’t been the woman he kissed so passionately. She turned around in his arms, and his hands came up to cup her breasts, and I recognized her. Holy cow, I thought. The man was making out with his sister-in-law.

  I backed off quickly because he had started to unbutton her shirt and I did not need to see more of that.

  My next house was the last one I’d go to, and it was the Mayor’s, D
ante’s father’s, house. It was supposed to be empty, and at first glance, it seemed that it was. Since it was dark inside I walked closer but then I saw movement in the shadows inside and quickly stepped to the side but not backing away. As I watched, Paolo strode through the room. It seemed to be the Mayor’s study, and Paolo was clearly familiar with it. He walked straight to the large desk, pulled a few papers out of his pocket and started to place them seemingly randomly in the drawers. He didn’t look at the contents of the desk but focused on tucking his own sheets here and there among other official looking papers. Then he stopped and looked around. I held my breath, but after a while, he straightened and walked out of the room again and with a heart that was pumping wildly I backed away.

  When the back door opened slowly, I backed even further away until I was in the garden of the smaller building next door to the Mayor’s house. The sounds of footsteps seemed to echo through my mind, and as they disappeared, I hoped that the bird would warn Mac that Paolo was on his way home.

  I decided to move back to the beach and wait for Mac, so I turned, and then I froze. Apparently, Dante lived next door to his father because I could see him through the windows of the back door. Snow sat at the kitchen table, and they seemed to be arguing. Dante was moving around agitatedly, and suddenly Snow got up too, approaching him and poking him in the chest repeatedly. He turned his eyes toward the ceiling, and no sounds reached me, but I could still feel his growl echo through the night.

  Suddenly a bird shrieked, and then another one.

  I straightened and as I watched, Snow’s head snapped up. Oh, yeah, I thought. This girl had a bird too, and that bird had just conveyed some kind of message to her. She turned her eyes toward Dante and my gut clenched. Her bright blue eyes were wide and frightened.

  Something had happened to Mac. Two birds had shrieked, and one was Snow’s, but the other one? It had to have been Mac’s falcon.

  Not caring if anyone heard, I turned and ran toward the beach. If Mac could, he would make his way there. If he couldn’t make it there… I didn’t want to think about that so I focused on getting back to our blankets as quickly as I could.

  Mac wasn’t in the dunes, but I had been running full speed so I’d give him a few minutes to reach me and then I’d gather up our things and go to the house, figuring out some kind of lie before I got back. I lit a few candles while I waited and then without any sound, he was there. Before I could say anything he fell down in the blanket and pulled me with him.

  “Hurt. Blanket on top of us. Quickly,” he wheezed.

  Throwing the second blanket around us, I felt him tugging at my clothes and I raised my hands to let him pull my top up and off. Then he tried to remove his own but failed and fell back on the blanket with a grunt. Slowly I sat up, straddling him, and carefully I removed the black material.

  He had a long cut from just below his left armpit and all the way down to his hip. Beside it, there were two smaller puncture wounds, and he seemed to have a hard time moving his left arm.

  Oh. Shit. This was not good.

  “What are you talking about?” a loud voice said not far away from us, and my eyes met Mac’s in the soft light.

  “I don’t think they want to be disturbed…”

  The voice came through the darkness again, and I recognized it then. Dante.

  Quickly I leaned down and pulled the blanket up to cover us, but only partially, up to my waist. Knowing our pale skin would show clearly in the darkness, I twisted around to pull up Mac's injured arm until his hand was at the nape of my neck.

  “Hold on to my hair,” I breathed into his mouth and felt him nod slightly as I leaned in closer and started kissing him, pressing my chest against his.

  When we heard footsteps next to us, I raised my head to look straight into Paolo’s pale, icy blue eyes. Another man stood next to Paolo, scowling ferociously. I didn’t recognize him, and I would have if I’d ever met him. One could say that he was simply a shorter version of Paolo Fratinelli, but it looked really weird seeing them next to each other. He was at least a head shorter than Paolo, although just as wide across the shoulders, and even more muscular. It looked like someone had somehow pressed his body together from above. Other than their height, they could have been twins and it occurred to me that maybe they were.

  The man turned a little, and I noticed that one of his eyes was swelling up. Shit, I thought. Was this the man who had hurt Mac?

  “A little privacy maybe?” Mac asked, breaking the silence.

  He sounded completely normal, even humorous as if he had no worries in the world except getting me out of my pants.

  “Paolo,” I gasped, swiftly covering us with the blanket. “Um, what are you…” I trailed off and looked away, trying to look embarrassed.

  “There was a break-in at my house,” Paolo said, looking at us with narrowed eyes. “We thought you might have seen something?”

  “What?” I gasped and moved as if to stand.

  “Uh, Wilder,” Mac murmured. “Don’t get up.”

  “Why not,” the strange man growled, and I almost gasped again.

  That voice was familiar. He’d been in the room talking to Paolo and his mother the evening before.

  “Yes,” Paolo said calmly, “I think you should get up, both of you.”

  Then Dante suddenly started laughing, and both men turned to him, not looking happy.

  “Not a good time to get up?” he asked Mac with a glint in his eyes.

  “Not really, no,” Mac replied ruefully.

  “For Christ’s sake,” the short man growled. “It’s not like we haven’t seen people fu –”

  “Francesco,” Paolo interrupted him quietly. “No need to be crude.”

  “You all need to go home, and we’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Mac suddenly said, and I shuddered when his voice suddenly slid through me like warm honey.

  “Wilder, I’m sorry. We were mistaken, and I apologize. We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Paolo said immediately and started to move away.

  The man called Francesco followed him, but Dante remained where he was until they had disappeared.

  “You’ll be okay?” he murmured, staring intently at Mac.

  I blinked. He hadn’t obeyed like the other two. Then I remembered what the old stories had told about Drake’s voice that forced obedience. It worked on everyone except his mate and the Waterfolk. Apparently, Dante was more Waterfolk than Paolo.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Mac whispered but his voice was hoarse, and he sounded exhausted.

  Dante’s eyes came to me, and I smiled a little but didn’t say anything, mainly because I had no idea what to say. He nodded and walked away.

  As soon as Dante’s footsteps had faded, I got to my feet, picked up our tee’s and shook them to remove the sand.

  “Don’t talk,” Mac breathed. “Voices carry across the water.”

  He was still on his back, and it worried me that he hadn’t moved. I ran down to the water and dipped my tee in the water. Then I went back to Mac and started to clean out the bigger wound, moving the candles closer so I could get a good look at it. There seemed to be sand or some other dirt in it, so I ran down to the water several time to wash out the tee. Finally, it seemed clean. Then my eyes fell on the sparkling wine that Paolo had given us. I knew that alcohol would be a good antiseptic, and the wine was perhaps not strong enough, but I decided that it wouldn’t hurt so I opened it and started to pour it over Mac’s side.

  He grunted when the liquid hit his wound, but that turned into a chuckle.

  “You’re dousing me with wine, baby?” he murmured weakly.

  “Better than nothing,” I replied and started to pat him dry.

  The long wound wasn’t deep, and it had bled as I washed it but I pressed his tee to it, and the bleeding mostly stopped after a while. The two puncture wounds were red and looked a little swollen, but all I could do was hope that they hadn’t hurt anything vital because
there was nothing I could do about them.

  “Let’s go back to the house. I’ll start up the phone and pretend that I just heard about Uncle Andy. That’ll give us a good excuse to leave immediately, and we’ll take your bike, drive through the night. Prosper is just a few hours away, I’ll get you to a hospital, baby,” I whispered.

  “Need a few hours, Wilder. Can’t hold on,” he murmured, and continued weakly, “I don’t get it. Shouldn’t be so bad. He wouldn’t have hit anything vital. The knife was short, and I turned, so it'll be mostly skin and fat. Twisted my shoulder, though.”

  “Okay. Yes. We go back to the house, and you can rest in bed until early tomorrow morning. I’ll keep watch, and if you get worse, I’m calling Hawker. If you’re okay, then I’ll drive you out of here tomorrow morning.”

  He was quiet while I gathered up our things and got him into his tee and jacket. When I pulled my own tee back on, I shuddered from the cold but kept going. The blanket we’d been on had a few stains, but I poured the rest of the wine on it and rubbed it with sand, hoping that it would be good enough to get us into our room where I could wash his blood away.

  Then we started to make our way back to the house. When we approached, I felt Mac using his good arm to put his other hand in my back pocket. When I opened the door, he squeezed my behind slightly and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Best way to lean on you,” he slurred.

  I started laughing, hoping that he’d deliberately made his voice sound that way to pretend that he was drunk.

  The house was dark and we walked quickly toward our room. When we were almost there, Mac suddenly stumbled, but I swung him around and up against the wall, dropping the empty wine bottle on the floor with a loud thud. At the far end of the corridor leading to the guest wing, a shadow moved slightly.

  “Oopsie,” I giggled loudly and stumbled into Mac.

  Then I started rubbing myself against him and felt how he put his good hand in the other pocket of my jeans. Then he used his hands to grind my crotch against his own