Page 45 of Wolf Tamer

And it doesn’t fucking matter to me.

It was an exhilarating thing, and I allowed myself to let go almost as a snub to them. My screams of passion were real, but I might have kept them to a reasonable level otherwise. I want his people to hear us. Maybe notsee, of course. The rest of it comes down to ego.

We lie on the ground, with me basically on top of him to keep warm, although there’s no way I’m breaking up this moment together. The cold doesn’t bother Reid. As a shifter, he runs hot. He’s like a sexy chiminea, putting off so much warmth I’m sure I’ll be sweating soon.

Instead of worrying about being a hot and sweaty mess, I snuggle closer, practically wrapping my body around him.

We both want it, so why fight it?

The sex is good, and he’s really a much better guy than I give him credit for normally. Even if he is,well, a wolf.

An animal.

“I honestly didn’t expect you to let me go through with that,” the wolf in question says close to my ear with a chuckle.

I roll my eyes, although he can’t see me. My cheek presses between his pecs with the echo of his heartbeat pulsing through me as well.

“Why?” I want to know. “I need sex just as much as the next person.”

Reid growls and his arms band around me in an unbreakable hold. “Sex, or sex withme?”

I purposely draw out the pause between his question and my answer, causing his growl to deepen alongside my laughter. “I want you, Reid. I’ll admit it,” I say as I walk my fingers along the muscled planes of his chest. “You’re one of a kind.”

His growl sounds more like a purr now. “I’m so glad you’re willing to admit it, Tash. Warms my heart.”

“Aw, it warms my cold, dead little heart too.” I coo the words at him for effect.

We lie together companionably for the longest moment, with the sound of his deep, heavy breaths lulling me. A false sense of complacency I’m sure, but one I treasure regardless.

“The witches didn’t take kindly to you betraying them,” he finally says to me. “To the point where they were willing to kill you without hesitation. Do you think there’s a deeper reason why? Something you or your parents might have done in the past?”

I want to shrug it off, and my immediate reaction is to make a joke, something to keep me from being vulnerable in a way I haven’t been for anyone besides my younger sister before now. It’s a scary proposition, and even thethoughtof sharing with Reid has me shivering in a way that has nothing to do with the cold weather.

“I don’t have a lot of memories about that time of my life,” I answer honestly. “When my parents were alive, they took me with them to coven meetings. Carmen, too, once she was born. I only remember hating it. Things at home were good, but most of the time it was me alone with my imagination since Mom and Dad only had eyes for each other. So… the coven meetings were always strange for me.”

I remember the stench of the herbs and the bodies crowding around me in an instant. The constant talking and incanting. It’s as though, once I access those memories, the smoke burns my nose again. The light-headedness that always seemed to accompany those ceremonial nights plagues me immediately, and I dig my fingers into Reid’s side.

Not that he minds.

In my head, I see my parents in their robes with a seven-year-old Tasha having to stay in one of the chairs on the outside of the room, holding Carmen on my lap and being quiet.

It’s almost impossible to keep a baby quiet, and I was still a kid myself. “My parents always told us those meetings were part of our heritage,” I say to Reid. “That it’s in our blood. And it’s true; the magic is most certainly born into us through them.”

“Not the rest of it?” he questions.

He genuinely wants to know, and I realize then that there are so many things I’ve kept from him. From everyone, really.

“It almost seemed fake. There was so much emphasis placed on the ceremony, on doing things a certain way. And all of the older coven members didn’t seem interested in helping my parents or helping me and my sister to feel more at home during the meetings. There was no sense of family. There was a definite hierarchy that, I guess, now that I think about it, always kind of got my back up. Once they saw that I wasn’t willing to dance to their tune and be the good little witch they wanted, well, they wrote me off.”

Once the words are out, it’s almost easier to talk to him.

“I hated it. I hated the witches,” I reveal, surprised at the way the words seem to flow, the secrets I’ve kept such a death grip on ready to pour right out of my soul.

I glance up at Reid just in time to see his eyebrows shoot up with interest. “Because of their attitudes?”

If only it were that simple. “They just… They weren’t there after my parents died.” I never would have guessed that putting my thoughts and feelings into actual words would take so much out of me. “They all but abandoned us to our grief outside of a few perfunctory offers to help when we needed, and I suspected they only offered those because they felt they had to.”

He airs a low murmur of agreement.

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