Sworn to the Wolf (8 page)

My heart.

“Thank you.” The way he looked at her made her feel stifled and free all at the same time. The whole experience was a bit disorienting. All these strangers talking to her like she was Laurent’s new wife or something when she’d known him all of a few days. It was odd but comforting. She liked them all very much but she couldn’t help but feel slightly wary.

* * *

After lunch Rain went on a walk with Kari and some of the other women. They’d continued to be open, curious about her and welcoming. By the time they came back to the lodge the van with the kids had pulled into the drive.

“Ah, your competition has arrived,” Kari said.

“Helene?”

“Laurent told you about her? She adores him. He’s been like another father to her since she was born. I’ve told her about you and she told me this morning that she was willing to share with you as long as he always took her to the fair and they still got to have their special days fishing on the lake.”

The door to the van slid open and children began running out toward the house. “The tallest boy and little girl in the blue dress are mine. Max and Drea,” Alyssa said, waving at them both.

“The tall one with the brown braids is Hellie, looks so much like her uncle Sean. The blond one who looks just like Andreas is Tomas, her twin. The two imps with dirty faces are the youngest twins, Sean and Devon.” Kari smiled, watching them tear into the house.

“And the littlest blond boy is Matthew, and the bossy little miss telling him what to do is Jade. Both mine,” Emma said.

“Such beautiful kids.” Rain smiled, feeling a bit of jealousy that these women seemed so in love and had such beautiful families. While the whole situation and extended family thing at the lodge made her wary, she had to admit she wanted it. Wanted to be a part of something that seemed so idyllic. Could she dare imagine herself here with these women? Laurent at her side, children running around?

By the time they walked back into the lodge Hellie had ensconced herself in Laurent’s lap and was busily telling him all about her day. Laurent idly bounced her on his knee, smiling and listening intently.

“If she wasn’t so young I think I’d have some major competition,” she murmured and Kari laughed.

“Hey, kiddos, this is Rain, Laurent’s...friend.”

The children waved, holding cookies and milk aloft.

Rain sat, listening to a story about the frogs their tadpoles had turned into. She laughed delightedly as the story unfolded with much drama.

“You’re back!” a female voice actually cooed from the doorway.

Rain turned toward it and saw a tall redheaded woman standing there, looking at Laurent like he was a slice of pie. Pie in question looked up in surprise.

“Paloma. I didn’t know you’d be here.” His voice was very metered and flat.

“Surprised?” Redhead laughed.

Rain’s eyebrow rose despite herself.
Who is this?

Kari sighed and Emma murmured to her, too low for Rain to hear.

Paloma sidled over and insinuated herself next to Laurent. Rain looked to Laurent then, waiting for a response on his part. Something to let the redhead know he was there with Rain.

Kari interrupted quickly. “Paloma, what a nice surprise. Please say hello to Rain. She’s Laurent’s
girlfriend
.”

At that pronouncement Paloma’s pretty face fell into a pout and she turned back to Laurent without even addressing Rain. “Really now? Interesting. Did you tell her about us?”

He sighed deeply. “I believe Rain’s waiting for you to say hello.”

Rain jerked back at Laurent’s silence with regard to what she was to him and with whoever the hell this woman was. This was after all the man who told her he loved her and needed her—and yet he failed to make that clear to this woman who clearly had an interest in rekindling what obviously had been an affair at one time.

Kari cleared her throat, raising her eyebrows at Laurent.

The redhead turned and looked Rain over with clear derision. “Hi. I take it you’re human?”

Rain laughed but there was an edge to it that every woman in the room recognized. “What else would I be?”
The nerve!
She stood up. “I’m feeling tired, if you’ll excuse me,” she said and left the room through the sliders on the deck off the dining room and started down the hillside toward the cabin.

“What on earth did you say that for?” Andreas roared.

“Children, why don’t you go to the playroom?” Phillip said and Anna came out with a plate of cookies and more milk and led the way through the house so their father could discipline one of his wolves.

“What?” Paloma said, feigning innocence.

“Of course she’s human, you could smell it. You mentioned it just to bait her,” Laurent growled out as he burst to his feet.

“Why is she here anyway? Jesus, Laurent, she’s some human mouse. Why her when you can have a wolf?”

Andreas interrupted before anyone could say anything else. “I don’t give a fuck about this business except for the part where you could have exposed us to an outsider.” His voice, laced with the power of a dominant wolf, slapped out.

Chastened, Laurent had to agree.

Andreas continued, satisfied to see Laurent’s focus where it needed to be. “You’re considering an excuse like you didn’t know he hadn’t told her. I’m going to recommend against that. There’ll be a tithe for your infraction.”

Laurent nodded. Rule infractions were punished in a whole series of ways. Every last one bound by rights and obligations. Rules. Hierarchy. As Lieutenant, it was up to him to decide the fate of a great many of the Pack.

A tithe was a payment. It could be a wide variety of things from money to being put to death.

As infractions went, endangering the secrecy that kept them safe was going to involve a hefty tithe that had to hurt.

“Your fine is twenty-five thousand dollars to be paid to the Pack within forty-eight hours,” he told her, knowing the fine would sting far longer than a beating of any sort would.

Andreas nodded subtly, approval stamped all over him.

Paloma’s face had gone bone white.

“Now then.” Laurent paused to underline the separation of his punishment and what he would say next. He knew better than to let her push his buttons. She fed off that reaction and had he been under better control, he’d have remembered before engaging with her.

Still, a point needed to be made. “She’s my Mate. You won’t upset her or interfere with her entrance into this Pack.” There was no need to point out that he and Paloma weren’t together. They hadn’t been even casually involved for seven months.

As a submissive wolf and one at the bottom of the power hierarchy, Paloma remained seated, keeping her head down. But the moment she fell to her knees, rubbing her face on his thigh to seek his pardon was the one Rain came back into the room to retrieve the sketchpad she’d left.

“I think I should be getting back to Seattle,” she said to Laurent through clenched teeth.

What a mess. He turned to her, stepping around Paloma. “This isn’t what it seems. Come, little heart, let’s talk about it.”

Rain snorted and walked out. Kari gave an
I
told you so
look at Andreas, who’d been squeezing her hand to keep her quiet, but she held her tongue, for which Laurent was eternally grateful.

He groaned before taking off after Rain.

When he got back to the cabin she was shoving her stuff back into her duffel bag. Stalking over, he grabbed the bag and put it on the floor. He took her arm. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving. That way you and your friend can be alone. I’m sure I can catch a bus back to Seattle in town.”

“You aren’t going anywhere. I don’t want to be alone with her, I want to be with you. I was telling her that right as you walked into the room. You ran out before I could explain.”

“On her knees? Her face near your cock? That was just disrespectful to both of us, Laurent.”

The show of obeisance wasn’t something he could expect any human to understand.

“She dropped something. It just looked weird from where you were standing. It was in a room full of people,” he tried to keep his voice calm. She’d understand all this so much better once he came out to her and explained their cultural rules.

Rain snarled at him as she curled her lip. “She asked if I was human! She rubbed herself all over you and you didn’t do a thing! What kind of man doesn’t stand up for a woman he’s just told he loves?” .

He held both hands up in surrender to her. “You have it so wrong. This is not what you think.”

“So tell me then! Tell me so I have it right.”

He seriously had no damned idea how to do this so he hoped she still gave him a chance. “ I don’t know what to do in these situations. There’s no one else for me, count on it. I
am not
interested in Paloma.”

“So tell me what the story is,” she said, arms crossed.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me about your family.”

She reared back, her brows flying up and he knew he had some serious groveling to do. “You’re actually going to try to bargain with me right now? After the way you just acted? You’ve got to be joking.”

“Look, it’s only fair. I share, you share. Come on, Rain, give a little.”

“No. But. If I don’t want to kick you in the face when you finish I might share,” she ground out.

He’d keep it to himself that when she was like this it made his cock hard.

“Let’s hope for the best then.” He held a smile back. “She’s part of the, um, extended family here. She and I dated a few times but it was
never
serious. The last time I was with her was at least seven months ago. I’ve told her ever since that I’m not interested.”

“The last time you were
with
her? As in,
your dick inside her
with her?”

Laurent cringed. “You get vulgar when you’re jealous. Remind me to never underestimate you. Yes. She and I had sex.”

“A lot or a little?”

“Enough.”

“What the hell does that mean? Did you fuck her, like, a hundred times or, like, two times?”

“Why is it important?”

“So a hundred times then.”

He sighed. “What? Where do you get that?”

“Your total evasion of the answer.” She glared at him.

“Women! We had sex about a dozen times. There, satisfied?”

“Um, no. See, so now I’m expected to hang out with some woman you’ve had sex with, and she’s still obviously in favor of continuing the situation. And she’s totally rude.”

“It was totally casual and meaningless. You’re the opposite of that. Whether she’s here or not I’m with you. You have to know that. Can’t you see how I feel about you?”

“Yes, I saw it when you sat there saying nothing when she was a total bitch to me. Oh and again when I walked out and you stayed to help her with
whatever she was picking up
. If you
care
for me so much, Laurent, why didn’t you defend me? She sat there and insulted me and you said nothing!”

“I apologize. It’s just the way to deal with her. She likes to push buttons so I try never to give her the ammunition. I wanted to diffuse your discomfort, not make it worse. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings and made you feel like I didn’t want to defend you. I just didn’t want to engage with her and make her think anything she said mattered.
It doesn’t matter.
You and I matter, that’s it.” He reached out to caress her cheek and she didn’t pull away. “You drive me crazy, Rain. I want you so much,” he said in an anguished whisper and kissed her lips.

She snorted and he started to laugh. “What?” she demanded.

“I used to watch Andreas and Kari and when she’d drive him nuts, just like you’re doing to me, I’d think to myself,
I’d never let a woman do that to me
. And yet here I am, right where he was, and I love every frustrating minute of it. Not a single woman on the face of this planet is as beautiful and strong and talented as you are. I want you and only you. I love you and only you. There are no others for me and there will never be again. Do you understand?”

“
Does she?
” Rain challenged back.

He grinned at her. “She knows. Truly, you came in at a weird moment and it looked sexual. It wasn’t. I swear to you.”

Her harrumph was less severe and when she sat on the couch, he took a chance and landed next to her. “Now will you stay? And we’ll get past this mess and enjoy the rest of this time we have?”

Maybe it was the year without ever feeling like she truly belonged because she had such big secrets that led to her always holding part of herself back, but Rain took another chance and decided to stay.

“You know my family is involved in organized crime already. I grew up in a world where women were accessories—daughters, mothers and wives. There are mistresses as well but they have their own world and aren’t spoken of. Anyway, from an early age my sister and I were trained to be dutiful daughters. We were sent to college but really only in preparation for marriage. I went to graduate school but only because my mother intervened so hard on my behalf.

“My father and his buddies actually arranged mine and my sister’s marriages when we were young. My sister married a fifty-five-year-old friend of my dad’s, a man who’d saved his life. This man was a widower and has three children, all of whom are older than she is. My sister is twenty-three years old.” Rain let the weight of that guilt settle around her like a worn sweater.

“I knew who my husband-to-be was. The son of one of my dad’s
associates
. Anthony wasn’t a total bad guy. At least he was my age. He’s the person who took my virginity at twenty-four, not that the event was very memorable. Anyway, my dad put the pressure on for me to finally get married.”

She remembered the turmoil. The creeping sense of dread that her life was never going to be her own and the one thing that kept her sanity intact was never going to be tolerated by her new husband.

“I’d been side-stepping and resisting for years and the situation finally came to a head. I didn’t love him, I wanted to paint. My dad insisted, Anthony insisted, Anthony’s father insisted. I agreed but secretly I went to my mother, who agreed to help me run. She started to put aside money for me here and there. My dad knew something was up and started to have me watched very closely. He made me leave my job so I had no money of my own. I agreed to marry Anthony but set the date a year out, saying that we had to plan a bash significant enough for a man of my father’s stature. He, being the egomaniacal asshole that he is, agreed and the pressure lightened a bit but I still had no car and no money.