Page 79 of The Lone Wolf Café
Rowena was silent while I worked. She kept her injured arm hanging out of the bathtub so it didn’t get wet, and her skin twitched and rippled every time I scrubbed blood off the more sensitive parts of her body. But the entire time, she never peeled her gaze away from me. I could feel those deep brown eyes studying my every movement.
And they looked like they were filled with just as much longing as mine were.
Finally, I scrubbed the last bit of blood off her body – a stubborn spot on her inner thigh where blood had seeped through her nightgown. I savored the way the movements made her delicate leg muscles tense. Her body was so different from mine – slender and waifish, with small hips, barely budding breasts, and pale skin like porcelain. I noticed she was clean-shaven – her legs and armpits were bare, and her pubic region was neatly trimmed to just a thin trail of hair.
As I finished cleaning her leg, I realized I’d been staring at that part of her body forfartoo long. And Rowena had noticed.
I bit my lip, my face burning from being discovered. She was just so beautiful. And fascinating. I’d never been with a woman before, and I ached to know how it all worked. I wanted to experiment. Figure out how to make her quiver under my touch, other than wiping dried blood off her body.
“Nettie?”
My hand froze, still hovering over her thigh with the sponge in hand. Rowena looked down and slid her uninjured arm down her leg, settling her hand on top of mine.
My blood burned, hot and aroused, beneath my skin.
“I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?” I replied, my tone rushed and breathy.You can ask me anything.
“I just need to know… before this goes any further…”
Her fingers clasped around mine, and my stomach dropped as if I’d just plummeted off a cliff. I was absolutelyburningdown there.
“You’re still here, in Wisteria Grove. I thought you were leaving? Today was your last day at the café…”
Her voice trailed off, her last words punctuated by a spike of sadness. My arousal dried up like water evaporating, and a deep, unsettling chill ran down my body.
Rowena was making her intentions clear. She wanted me. But I still needed to explain what happened over the past twenty-four hours. Why I tried to flee this town without so much as an explanation.
“I need to confess something,” I sighed. “I heard you talking with your father last night. And when you two disappeared into the woods, you’d left your door cracked open, and, well, I…”
“Oh goddess,” Rowena’s face paled. “You saw the crate.”
“And the chains, and the muzzle. This may sound absurd… but I thought you were a werewolf hunter. That’s why I planned to leave without explanation.”
Rowena exhaled, unlacing her fingers from mine and rubbing a hand over her face. “I’m so sorry, Nettie. I completely understand how you came to that conclusion. I would’ve fled, too.”
“But that crate, and all the restraints… I understand now. They’re for you. You lock yourself up every full moon so you don’t harm anyone.”
Rowena nodded, melancholy lining her face. “It’s so hard… being an outcast, alone, with no one to talk to. Until you came along. This spunky, beautiful redhead bursts into my café out of nowhere, and I can smell that she’s a werewolf. A runaway, hiding her identity like me.”
“Wait… that’s why you swore you’d protect me,” I realized. “Because you knew I was a werewolf, like you.”
“Yes. I felt a deep kinship with you from the start. But then I got to know you, all your little quirks, your sass and humor, your ridiculous notion that coffee is better than tea–”
I giggled. Rowena scoffed.
“–and I saw how much you loved working here. You have so much passion, so much kindness, and such a big heart. My whole life got better when you entered it. It’s just–” Rowena inched closer, so our faces were less than a foot apart. “–I know you’re in danger here. Our time together was always limited. But I don’t want it to end. I want more. So much more. Is that wrong? Am I insane?”
Gods, Rowena…I slipped my palm around her cheek, running my fingers down the soft, peach-fuzz skin of her temples. She did the same, and our embrace tightened and intensified until we were holding each others’ heads and our foreheads were touching.
“No. It’s not insane,” I whispered, my eyes on Rowena’s slightly parted lips. Lips that were just inches from mine. “We werewolves believe in fate, that our futures are decided for uslong before we’re born. I defied my own fate by leaving my home island. At first, I thought I’d made a horrible mistake. But I didn’t. Running away was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
I curled my hand around the back of her head, strands of her black hair tangling through my fingers.
“I decide my own future,” I declared. “But the superstitious part of me, the one raised in the way of the werewolves, still believes some things are meant to be. Meeting you was fate. Discovering that you’re a werewolf, just like me, was fate.”
I could feel her breath on my lips, her sweet perfume in my nose, and I wanted to consume this moment, to feed it into my soul so it would live there forever.
