9. Questions

She released him and lay back on the ground, her body covered in sweat from the both of them. Her eyes cracked open to look at him as he chuckled. She turned a bright red. But she couldn’t be mad, not with him nuzzling against her. She found she liked that a lot. Emmalyn moved her hand up his back and into his hair, her fingers toying with his hair, twirling it around her fingers. She moved so that she could look up at him. A bit of worry moved across her features.

“They won’t try to do what we did, will they?” she asked, fearful of being tossed around and shared.

The smell of roasting meat cut through the thick scent of sex clouded around them. He sniffed more, letting out a murmur of approval when he breathed in the sweet musk of her sweat and cum. But he focused further on the rabbit. There was a smell of fat melting, lean muscle cooking, and a very faint trace of burnt flesh. He needed to turn the meat.

“I’ll tell them you’re mine. Three are under my ranking, so they must listen. But if the others defy me, I will not let them near you either way. I promised to keep you safe,” he assured her, dropping a warm kiss on her lips before he slipped from her tight passage and pushed himself up.

He was careful as he crawled out from under the tarp to keep all the warm air inside, though a curl of cold air still crept in to graze along her damp skin before the residual heat smothered it. She hisses when the chilled air crept in and kissed along her sweat-touched skin like a spurned lover. Emmalyn shivered and curled up, trying to conserve what heat she could with her lover now gone. That thought hit her suddenly. He was her lover. But what did that really mean? She knew what it meant back in the human world with the human city around them and the ideas of that society. She didn’t know what it meant to him and his kind. He had made a promise to her, and she knew he would do all he could to keep it. Besides, he was a considerate lover. He had proven that.

At ease with his own nudity, he strode to the fire and leaned down to shift the spit around so the other half of the rabbit could cook. It wasn’t too damaged. Only a small place that was closest to the flames had burned darker but hadn’t charred. Heedless of the hot meat burning his fingers, he tore off several layers of the cooked bits, piling them in his palm before he hurried back to the tarp. He dove inside, eager to be near her, and stretched out at her side.

After he adjusted the surrounding tarp, leaving space for them both to move, he lowered himself on his elbows, slipping his knee between her thighs. Once he settled, he plucked a strip of meat from the pile in his hand and brought it to her lips. She parted her lips when the piece of succulent meat touched those soft petals. She looked up at him as she chewed the morsel.

“I’ll never understand why you humans insist on ruining a excellent piece of meat by cooking it.”

“What you do you mean I am yours?” she asked, not understanding. “You said before you left that ‘I’ll tell them you’re mine’, but I don’t know what that means to your kind,” she told him honestly.

“You aren’t. Not really,” he explained.

Farrel watched her mouth as if her chewing was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. Once she had swallowed that first bite, he placed another small strip against her lips. His own lips pursed then drew back, revealing the strong white line of his teeth, encouraging her to eat more. Satisfied that she accepted nourishment, he set his mind back on her question.

“I doubt I could claim you as my true mate without the elders’ permission. Even then, I’m not sure how I can mark you.” He paused then, licking the juices from the rabbit off his fingers before he reached down to trace one fingertip along the sensitive curve of her neck and shoulder. “A mate leaves their bite here. It scars them with a unique symbol and leaves their mate’s scent in their flesh.”

His eyes drifted to hers, searching those wary, dark orbs for a long while.

“The way you heal would make marking you impossible. And the fact you’re human, I could very well crush your bones if I bit you in the heat of the moment.”

“You can’t let them take me,” she whispered, opening her mouth and taking another bite.

She let him feed her, her eyes staying on his the entire time. He was ruggedly handsome. Any woman would be more than happy to have him as a lover. But she was different. She needed more; she needed to feel safe.

“Can you ask them? How many mates do you have?” she asked him, trying not to sound as scared as she was at the thought of not having him there with her.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” her brows furled together as she asked him.

She turned her head to the side as he moved his finger along her skin. She looked up at him.

“You could try to. I could try not to heal. I’ve done it before, but it’s difficult. If you mark me, they wouldn’t have a say anymore, would they?” She asked him.

She looked back at him and grew serious for a moment.

“What do your people say about me? Are they different from what I’ve been told?” She asked him, her eyes looking for truth in his. “I was always told that they would kill me to keep me from the vampires. Is this true?”

The verbal assault, despite their serious tone, made him chuckle. He considered the fact should offend him she had the energy to ask so many questions. But her reminder that her ability also pertained to her own healing rate soothed his ego. It also encouraged him he could spend the night enjoying her body without worrying about the lasting damage.

He kept his answers back, urging her to finish all the meat he had brought, then licked his hand clean before he wiped it across the material of the tarp. The strong bands of his arms wound around her, lifting her as he quickly flipped them over, settling her slight frame down on top of him; stretched out on his back. His hands brushed down her sides, petting her soft skin, then urged her back until her body rested against his slumbering loins.

“I could crush you. Easily. I was restraining myself when we fucked. Had I put my full force into my actions you would be battered, broken, and most likely dead,” he murmured, contradicting his claim of strength by trailing a feather-light touch along with her pert breasts to toy with one of her nipples.

“You can have a say. But they will overrule you. I’ve no mate. My Alpha status is to a pack of hunters. My entire purpose is to track, kill, and protect. There are Alphas that tend to the breeders and concubines.”

Pointedly, he held back the fact that he was the first choice to be Alpha for the breeders. A station he turned down because he did not want to give up fighting. If a war broke out, then he would have fled with the females to keep them safe, as would have been his purpose, aside from mounting all of them. An important job but not one that fit his blood lusts.

“I cannot override the elders, healer. Do not ask me to break our chain of command because you are afraid. You already have my word that I will let no one harm you. Be happy for that,” he told her, though there was a firm undertone making it clear he would hear no more of her demands.

“I do not know what you’ve been told, so I cannot tell you otherwise. As for you, they’ve been waiting for the prophecy of your joining us for a long while. They had discussed killing you may be the only way to keep the vampires from taking you, but it is not a step the elders will take. Aside from this, I do not know what they plan to do with you.”