Come Moonrise (9 page)

"You wanted to marry her?" she asked. All
the signs pointed to that, but still she couldn't quite believe it.
Not after last night.

"Yes."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You don't
mean that."

"I do. Mating with Olivia would have been
natural."

"Your father likes her, I guess."

"Yes, he does."

"Because she's your kind."

"Yes."

"But you didn't want her!" Pain and anger
was ripping through her in a torrent of devastation. "And she
didn't want you."

"I planned to change that."

"Only I got in the way." If learning he was
a werewolf was overwhelming, discovering he had truly planned to
marry...mate with...another woman was devastating.

This conversation had moved from the realm
of unbelievable to the tortuous.

"Yes."

The confirmation of her fear hurt. It also
made her mad. Really, really mad. She hadn't been alone in that bed
last night and he hadn’t been thinking of Olivia when they made
love. Had he? What if he'd had sex with her because she was
handy...because Olivia was not?

She would not live her life as a substitute
for anybody.

"Just because we had sex doesn’t mean you
can’t marry her," she said scathingly, her fury making her feel
violent. She wasn't about to beg for his affection. She shouldn't
have to. "That kind of thing happens all the time."

He seemed to grow with an
anger that easily matched hers. "
You’re
wrong
. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in
the werewolf world. Once we mate, it’s for life - a byproduct of
our animal nature and pack law. Unlike humans, we have no
infidelity and there is no provision for divorce in our
pack."

"Are you saying that
making love
is equivalent
to
mating
for a
werewolf...
to marriage?
"

"Yes."

"
Oh, please
."

His face creased in a fierce frown, his blue
eyes dark with obvious displeasure at her skepticism.

She frowned back. "That
would mean that every woman you’d had sex with would be your mate."
No way could that be true, but then... "Hold on a minute,
you don’t have multiple mates do
you?
" If her question came out more
hysterical than not, she could be forgiven.

No way was she joining a harem.

But wouldn’t she have noticed if he lived
like some kind of lycanthrope sultan? Then again, she hadn’t even
noticed he was a werewolf.

And furthermore, did her questions indicate
she accepted all that he was saying as truth?

It seemed she did. As implausible as his
story might sound, Ty had never lied to her, nor was he the
delusional type. And then there was the wolf incident...the things
he knew he could not have known if he hadn't been there, hadn't had
the sharp hearing of a wolf. This was all real. Too real.

His hand gripped hers more tightly, as if an
involuntary reaction to her words. "One mate, one mating," he said,
each word spaced for hard emphasis.

"
That would mean that last night you were a
virgin
." She was back to practically
shrieking.

He winced at the volume of her voice.
"Yes."

"
Impossible
."

His frown turned to a smug, mocking smile.
"Thank you. I’d hate to think I didn’t live up to your ex-fiancé
and other lovers."

"There were no other lovers besides him,
but..." Her voice trailed off because she didn’t know what else she
wanted to say. "I’m finding all of this really hard to digest."

She would not admit that the part she found
hardest to digest was his affection for Olivia. She could live with
him being a werewolf...she thought...but she couldn’t live with
that.

"Considering how hard we work to hide our
existence from humans, that's no surprise. You're having to replace
a lifetime of myth with a very different reality regarding our
kind." The anger seemed to have drained out of him, leaving him
thoughtful. "What does surprise me is the fact you seem to believe
me. I thought it would take witnessing my change for you to accept
what I am."

She wasn't bringing up the incident when she
was fifteen. His knowledge of her self-pleasuring while she
daydreamed of him was way too embarrassing. She settled for saying,
"You’ve never lied to me."

"No, I haven’t."

Thinking of a couple of things he’d said to
her the day before made her heart cramp in pain. He’d said, or at
least implied, he didn’t love her like a woman he wanted to marry.
He’d also said any physical intimacy between them would be nothing
more than sex.

She didn’t want to face those revelations
right now, but the pain refused to be dismissed in order to be
dealt with when she was ready. It pulsed inside her in a steady,
aching rhythm.

She pulled her hand from his grasp and
scooted toward the edge of her side of the bed.

His eyes narrowed at her movement.

"If I marry you, you’re stuck with me as
your mate for the rest of our lives?"

"I told you, I’m already stuck. The minute I
put my cock inside you, we were mated."

"That can’t be." Though if sex equaled
mating and mating equaled some kind of permanent werewolf marriage
ritual, then he really was stuck with her.

No matter how either of them felt about
that.

"So, even if I walk away..."

"I cannot take another mate."

"That’s not fair."

"Fair isn’t in the equation."

No, it wasn’t. She either consigned herself
to marriage to man who didn’t love her, or consigned the man she
loved to life-long celibacy. After last night and this morning, she
didn’t think he would thank her for that. "You should have warned
me of the consequences. I had a right to know."

"You didn’t give me the chance. I told you
to leave. You wouldn’t go." His voice was rough, like he was angry
again and the expression in his blue eyes had turned accusing.

But remembering how he had responded to her
presence made her balk at accepting all the guilt for their current
predicament. "You didn’t want me to. Not really."

"Like hell."

Disbelief rolled through her. She’d never
known Ty to shirk responsibility for his own actions like this.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t like the results, but that didn’t mean he
got to blame her for them.

"You didn’t try very darn hard to get rid of
me," she reminded him.

"I couldn’t," he gritted out, sounding
really disgusted with himself.

"I don’t buy it. You are one of the most
self-disciplined people I know."

"Everyone has their limits. I reached
mine."

"Right. I’m irresistible."

"Last night you were...to me."

His obstinate denial of any culpability for
their time together added more pain to the cauldron boiling inside
her. This was so not the way she’d thought the morning after would
be conducted. "How can you be like this after what we shared?"

"You mean the sex? I suppose I should take
comfort in the fact that my mate is a real firecracker in the sack.
Not all humans can keep up with a werewolf, but you held your own
last night. I’m surprised your ex-fiancé let you go so easily. Most
men would kill for a response like yours."

She stared at him. The
words were border-line insulting, but he sounded jealous not
mocking. Only
he
had nothing to be jealous of. She wasn't the one who had made
love to him after only the day before having plans to marry someone
else.

She curled her lip with derision at his
obtuseness. "If I’d been able to give it to my ex, we would be
married right now and last night would never have happened."

But she hadn't loved the other man. She
loved Ty even if he was too stupid to see it.

"Well, you’re with me now," he said through
gritted teeth. "I suppose I should feel honored there haven’t been
any other men since your ex-fiancé. You obviously like your
sex."

That was definitely an insult and it was one
too many.

She punched him in the chest. Hard. But it
had been like hitting a rock, make that a petrified rock.

Her hand stung and she
rubbed it. "
You jerk
."

"Maybe...probably..." he
admitted with an angry shake of his head. "But I’m
your
jerk."

"Oh no. Olivia can have you. With my
blessing." It wasn’t a rational thing to say, not after what he’d
told her about the permanency of mating, but she was so mad, she
almost meant it.

Did she really care if this condescending
idiot spent the rest of his life without sex? She would do the same
with the rest of hers. If she walked away... But it would be a cold
day in Hades before she admitted that to him.

"
Oh yes
," he growled. "You knew I
wanted her, but you seduced me anyway. Now, you get me, Frankie.
For a lifetime."

"You didn’t want Olivia," she yelled in
frustration, totally unwilling to stomach that lie on top of his
nasty attitude.

Maybe he hadn’t wanted to mate with Frankie,
but he didn’t desire Olivia either. Not really. His head might say
the femwolf would make a better mate, but his body had not been
engaged. She refused to believe on top of everything else that
she'd been a stand in for another woman.

Her heart could not accept it and she was
going to make him admit it. "You two fight like brother and
sister."

"Not everyone courts with roses and
poetry."

"Even the most unromantic guy in the world
treats a woman he wants with more warmth than you treated her
yesterday."

"You saw us together one time. You are
hardly in a position to judge. You have no idea what we were like
together when we were alone."

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying
to control the mushroom cloud of pain imploding inside of her. "I
can’t argue that, but you still went to bed with me last night. Not
her."

There
had to be
some significance to that
fact.

"I wouldn’t have, if you had stayed on the
couch."

The words slashed through her with a
finality that left no room for rosy dreams and hopeful fantasies,
decimating her defenses with the power of a nuclear blast. One
time, fourteen years ago, she’d felt this way. Like someone had
reached inside her chest and ripped out her heart.

The day she was told of her parents’
deaths.

She’d felt just as empty, just as bereft,
and every bit as scared then as she did right now.

"I
was
just a stand in. She wasn't here
and I was," she whispered in agonized acceptance.

CHAPTER
SIX

She rolled out of the bed onto her feet,
dragging the quilt with her and wrapping it around her now
trembling, naked body.

She slapped at his hands
when he tried to grab her. "
Don’t touch
me
."

"Frankie, come back here."

"No."

"We’re not done talking."

"Yes, we are."

He got out of the bed, not bothered by his
own nudity as he stood in front of her, glowering down at her. "You
are my mate, not Olivia. No matter how it came about. It is now a
fact."

"So, you’re resigned to it?
And I suppose you expect me to resign myself to marriage with a man
who’s pining after another woman?
You
think I should be okay with you using my body while you think of
her?
"

"It wasn't like that!"

Her eyes burned with tears she'd be darned
if she shed in front of him. "You just got through saying it
was."

"I did not. I would never do that to you."
He rubbed his hand over his face, frustration lining his chiseled
features. "Look, you’re right. The chemistry wasn’t there between
Olivia and me. She didn’t want me any more than I wanted her. I
realized that yesterday. I shouldn’t have implied there was more to
our relationship than what you saw. I was being a prick and I'm
sorry."

He sounded more furious than apologetic and
was his explanation supposed to make Frankie feel better?

It didn’t. It just gave her another possible
reason for him making love to her that was extremely painful. Had
the other woman’s rejection caused him to accept Frankie’s sensual
overtures? Had he made love to her in order to assuage his hurt
pride at realizing Olivia didn’t want him?

Her mind was spinning with one scenario
after another, all of them awful.

"What was last night?" she asked in a
desperate bid to understand how something so beautiful could have
ended in this sense of ugly desolation.

"It was our mating."

But what had it meant to him besides what
pack law stated it meant?

"Why did you make love to me like that..."
Like he could never get enough, like she was ambrosia to his soul.
"So many times...if you didn't want me?"

"I couldn't help myself." He said it so
flatly she couldn't argue.

True, or not...he believed she had seduced
him...believed she was at fault for them having sex.

Wasn't she?
a voice inside her head whispered. Hadn't she
chosen to make love not caring what the future held? She'd known he
hadn't wanted a future with her and she had wanted him
anyway.

"I don't know what to do..." All she knew
was that she hurt. Everywhere. Both inside and out. She could
barely walk, her thigh muscles were so sore. "I need some time to
myself. To think."