Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) (2 page)

Understanding lit up in her eyes and she nodded. It wasn’t technically forbidden to get a human pregnant, but in these modern times it was frowned upon because the products of such unions didn’t always turn out well. Both human and werewolf gestations were complicated to begin with—but put them together and, well, sometimes you ended up with wolves who had, for lack of a better word, defects. Wolf society prided itself on the superior abilities that came with being werewolves: super strength, an acute sense of smell, the ability to hear things most humans couldn’t. So a half-breed wolf who couldn’t hear—it was off-putting, to say the least, and for most she-wolves, a total deal breaker.

He was doing Tu a courtesy by giving her this information, allowing her to back down from her original bold stance.

And it worked, somewhat.

“What…”
She paused in a way that let Grady know she was searching for the right sign. “
Where your mother?”

“
Same Luke mom. Die.”
He spelled it out, because he doubted she’d know the sign for what had happened.
“O-V-E-R-D-O-S-E.”

There she had it, the whole ugly story. Yeah, he was a real catch. The son of two drug addicts, deaf, mute, and only half werewolf.

But the side of her mouth hitched up and she signed,
“Sad story, Wolf. But. You STILL HOT.”
She emphasized the still and really emphasized the sign he’d taught her for hot.

At that point, he had to sniff at her, wondering if she was drunk or on something. He could smell a little alcohol, but not much.

“How many drink you have tonight?”

She held up a single index finger.

“Drugs?”

“Not tonight,”
she answered. Then she asked.
“You have drugs?”

Did she just ask him if he was carrying?

“I sheriff next year.”

She nodded with faux somberness.

“
Understand. My last fun year, too. So you should do same me. Have a LOT fun THIS year.”
She then had the nerve to wink at him, like she was so much more experienced and knew exactly what she was talking about.
“My P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y.”

He was just about to ask why this would be her last fun year, when a black man came up to Tu and started talking with her. He was a big guy, not as big as Grady, but big enough. And the way he carried himself… Grady could tell he was destined to become somebody’s beta. Might even be descended from one.

Grady could smell that he and Tu were from the same place and related somehow. Cousins maybe? Rafe had mentioned something about a cousin staying in the main house, since the Alaska royals were currently occupying all three bedrooms of the kingdom guest house.

The maybe cousin and Tu seemed to be having some kind of light argument, one Grady couldn’t lip read, because they were turned sideways.

“What’s wrong?”
he asked Tu.

“Must go. Mother says leave at ten. C-U-R-F-E-W. My cousin come. Say have go guest house.”
She then indicated the guy standing beside her.
“This Vince.”

Vince waved at him, looking a little nervous about all the signing. “Hey, man,” he said out loud.

“
Vince my best friend always
,” Tu signed.
“But also babysitter. So…”
she couldn’t think of the sign but rolled her eyes and spelled it out,
“R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S.”

And just like that, the bubble burst. Suddenly they were back in the Colorado kingdom house ballroom with couples dancing in the background as his brother spun music Grady couldn’t hear on the turntable.

Grady morphed back into that guy in the tux, not because he was an honored guest, like his friend, Mag, who had just become King of Wyoming a few weeks ago, but because he was covertly working security. Rafe had thrown this party in Mag’s honor, ostensibly to celebrate him winning two challenge fights in his bid to become King of Wyoming, but really, so Mag could meet up with the King of Alaska to see about pledging Janelle Atenaq, Tu’s oldest sister. Janelle was twenty-five, the same age as Grady, Mag, and Rafe. Which made him wonder how old that made her youngest sister, especially if her parents thought she needed a babysitter.

Grady’s eyes narrowed.
“You how old?”

“2-0.”
Tu rolled her eyes.
“Mother, father, too P-R-O-T-E-C-T-I-V-E.”

And he got the answer to the question he hadn’t been able to ask. She’d be turning twenty-one next year, the official pledge age for upper class she-wolves. That’s why she was so interested in having fun. Because next year she’d be put on the market, pledged to some wolf befitting her station, and the fun would definitely be over.

A stab of relief soared through him. Twenty wasn’t too bad. Not old enough to be offered up for official pledge, but only five years younger than him which meant he didn’t have to feel like a perv for being attracted to her. Although the truth was, considering his status as a half-breed, deaf-mute, almost-beta from a mange state, he had no business talking to a princess, much less enjoying her company so much that he didn’t want her to leave.

She peeped up at him again, mischief dancing across her heart-shaped face.

“Tell him you walk me home. You S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y. He let you do his work.”
Then she met his gaze, her brown eyes dark with seduction.
“You kiss… in past… she-wolf?”

Her syntax wasn’t great, but his body perfectly understood what she was asking. He felt himself become stiff at just the thought of…

“No,”
he signed, answering both her and the question his body was asking.

“
Awesome
!” she signed, her eyes twinkling with merry delight.
“Me kiss you number one if you tell cousin you walk with me home. I promise.
”

She would give him his first she-wolf kiss if he got her cousin to agree to let him walk her home. This girl…

Grady inwardly shook his head. She might be young and small, but she was fucking dangerous. Too dangerous. He should tell her goodbye and go back to circling the party. Do his job just like he’d texted his younger brother to do his.

But in the end, he pulled out his smart phone and opened up the note pad app he used to could communicate with people who didn’t sign. He typed and turned it to face Vince. It read,
“I’m head of security for this party. I’ll walk her home.”

G
RADY REALLY HAD no business walking Tu Ataneq to Rafe’s guest house. She was a guest of his best friend and soon-to-be employer. The only reason she was here was because her oldest sister might possibly be pledged to his other best friend. She was the princess of a wealthy state with all the potential in the world. In one year, when her parents put her up to pledge, they’d probably get flooded with offers. And he was a defective beta from a mange state who was lucky Rafe had taken pity on him and given him a respectable job. He had no business talking to Tu, much less walking her home.

Yet… he wanted to hold her hand. Could feel the urge like an itch, one that wasn’t remotely satisfied when he scratched his palm instead of taking a hold of hers.

And then they were at the guest house. At two stories with a standing beam metal roof and expansive windows facing out over the main road, the modern looking three-bedroom log cabin was just as nice, if not nicer, than most of the homes in Wolf Springs.

Grady could still remember coming home with Rafe for fall break after they first met playing ball on opposite sides of the line for Denver U. He’d heard the Colorado crown had a lot more money than the Oklahoma royal family, but he hadn’t really understood how much more until Rafe brought him and Mag to a house that was three times the size of the two-bedroom farm house Grady sort of called home. Imagine his surprise when he realized it wasn’t even the main house, but simply a guest house for visitors. Now, coming to a stop in front of the familiar stone steps that led up to the front door, the house served as yet another reminder of why Grady had no business spending time with the youngest Alaska princess.

“Thank you,”
she signed.

“
You’re welcome,”
he signed back. This was where they said goodbye. He should go now. He should definitely go.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lingered, waiting for her to say something else.

She lifted her hands and signed, “
You ready kiss?”

He shook his head.
“You don’t have to kiss me.”

She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes.
“I promise you at party. I lie sometimes—don’t care. But I ALWAYS keep promise.”

“You don’t have to keep promise,”
he signed back, though it was hard to concentrate on his hand movements with his wolf tingling down his lower back, threatening to take over. Grady quickly turned off his emotions and tried to focus on the image of a concrete wall in order to tune out what had come to hard life below his belt.

And then she signed.
“I don’t have to keep promise, but I want keep promise. I want kiss you.”

Now his beast was howling. He shoved his hands into his pockets to cover the shaking. She needed to understand while he may be defective as far as wolves were concerned, human women didn’t care so much about all that. Especially not when it came to guys on the college football team. So he didn’t need her pity kiss, because he’d kissed plenty of women. And that wasn’t all he’d done.

But you haven’t kissed her,
the beast growled inside of him.

Tu took his lack of response as an invitation to take matters into her own hands. She stood on her tiptoes and puckered her lips for what he instinctively knew would be one of those sloppy kisses drunk sorority girls used to try to give him, the ones his sense of right and wrong never allowed him to accept. In Tu’s case, though, he might have let her do it, let her kiss him however she wanted. But at the last second, his hands came out of his pockets and landed on her arms.

“Wait,” he mouthed. If he was going to let her do this, if this was really going to happen, then he wanted it to be better than the clumsy kiss she was about to offer him. He wanted it to be the best it could be, something they’d both remember for a long, long time.

He repositioned her so she stood on the first step, putting their faces at almost the same height. Then she started to dip her head towards his, quick and clumsy, but he leaned back before anything could happen. He wanted to look at her, take a mental snapshot of this moment, before… he smoothed the back of his knuckles over her cheek, and waited until her confused brown eyes raised to meet his. Then he finally took the kiss she’d been trying to give him, his mouth moving over hers, slow and unhurried. She tasted like champagne and he let his tongue delve further into her mouth like an explorer opening the doors to an ancient treasury.

Grady didn’t want to just kiss Tu, he wanted to know her. Know her lips, know the feel of her tongue against his. The erection inside his pants pulsated, and he pressed it against Tu’s stomach, telling her without words how much he wanted to know her and in more ways than one.

Tu must have felt it, too, because a shiver went through her body before she leaned back and signed, “
Can’t”
with an apologetic look on her face.

Grady tapped his fingers against his temple. “
Know.”

Even if sleeping with an unheated she-wolf wasn’t strictly forbidden, he’d never want to rush Tu. His lower back had stopped tingling the moment their lips met, signaling that both his wolf and his human were in agreement on this. They wanted to savor her.

And maybe Tu felt the same way, because when he bent down to kiss her again, she didn’t just take his kiss, she kissed him back. Slow, sensual like he’d suddenly transformed from a novelty experiment in her mind to… to… something else.

She moved in closer, wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders, and this time her pelvis grazed against the part of him that wanted. A hot pulse of need sizzled up his shaft, causing his body to involuntarily jerk within her light hold.

She didn’t let him go, but he felt her hand stroke the back of his short hair, and she murmured something against his lips that felt like “sorry,” before readjusting her stance, so their lower bodies were no longer touching, and deepening the kiss.

For a while that was enough, but then the beast—the fucking beast inside of him. It turned on him again. Started agitating. Breathing in Tu’s scent, in a way that sent his erection into painful territory. Grady’s lower back started tingling again, which told him even clearer than the flashing LED lights on his alarm clock for the deaf, that it was time for this dream to come to an end. That if he didn’t stop the kiss soon, no matter how good his intentions toward Tu, he’d lose control of his beast—

Tu abruptly pulled away from him, her head turning toward the copse of trees that lay between the guest house and the kingdom mansion. His senses came back on line and he smelled what she’d obviously heard: her sisters were headed this way.

Tu signed
“go
,” and he started to leave, not wanting to but knowing he should for Tu’s sake. She came from a place where reputations were still a thing. But then she tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fun,”
she signed when he turned back around, her eyes twinkling with amusement under the front house lights.