How To Marry A Werewolf (Claw & Courtship, #1)(28)

Channing had decided to tell her he knew because he’d found out her secret and it wasn’t his to keep. He hadn’t been charged with this one, and he did not need another secret to burden his daylight sleep. He also wanted her to know that this was no grave thing, not to him. He needed her to know that. He would not judge and he would not reject her. He wasn’t like them. He was a cad, but not in that way.

So, he phrased it the way he saw it. “He ruined you for his own amusement and showed you no mercy.”

Faith had turned away and was looking back towards the house, through the trees and across the empty garden. “He did it because my father is an ass. And, frankly, my father is in fact an ass. I just never guessed his choices would burden me. I believe that the werewolves didn’t mean to hurt me, not really. Frankly, I doubt they thought of me at all. They wanted to humiliate my parents. I was just collateral.”

“Is that why you want to marry a werewolf? For revenge?” The sweet, intoxicating scent of her teased him with possibilities.

“No one else will have me, not if they find out,” she said. “It’s known that werewolves prefer a seasoned woman. Why else always go after widows?”

Channing laughed. “While it is true that purity is not valued by my compatriots, that is not why werewolves so often pursue widows.”

Faith nodded. “You cannot have children, so you don’t want to steal the opportunity away from a girl. And are you…” She paused, swallowing hard.

Despite himself, Channing found his eyes drawn to her beautiful white neck.

He wanted to lick it.

“Are you like your compatriots in this matter?”

He’d lost the thread of the conversation. “What?” he barked, sounding annoyed and trying not to.

“Do you value purity?”

“God’s teeth, no. What right have I to that? I’m nothing if not impure myself. Why should I demand anything different in a lover? I mentioned my learning of your indiscretion not as a critique, Lazuli, but only so that you might know that I know. Between us, there is no need for secrecy in this matter.”

“There’s more.” She trembled a little.

“And you may tell me if you wish, and I will listen and not judge, because who am I to judge? But only if you wish it, Lazuli.”

“Not yet. That part hurts.”

He hid a wince.

She sipped a small breath and soldiered on. “The other, well… I was willing, to my eternal shame, as Mother says. Frankly, it was just embarrassing, both during and after.”

“It?” He pressed for particulars and wanted to kill that unnamed claviger – for his failures, for her disappointment, for touching her at all.

She was brave in her confession. “Not exactly what I expected. What I had hoped.”

“You knew to hope for something? How advanced was your education beforehand?” He was surprised, not critical. Americans were a strange lot.

But she took it as censure. “I’m perfectly able to read, Major! It’s amazing what you can find in bookstores these days. Boston is a very cosmopolitan city. Frankly, now that it’s all over, I’ve no clue what all the fuss is about.”

“Now that, my Lazuli, I can show you.”



Faith wasn’t trying to be tempting or coy.

It had been mostly embarrassing. That one experience with a man. Oh, Kit had been nice enough. She had genuinely liked him and found him handsome – boyish and dark-haired, with smiling eyes. He was funny, too, an actor and yet amiable, with unaffected address.

But the carnal act itself had been, in a word, disappointing. Clammy and awkward and uncomfortable, and briefly painful, and then with him rutting over her, colored mainly by regret – that she had risked so much for so little.

She could admit none of this to Major Channing, but his eyes in the dark of the small forest gleamed like a true wolf.

Come into the woods, little girl.

I will. I will follow you into darkness.

Faith could not deny the risk was there again, for her to take. Passion and desire, just a taste, or maybe he offered more. It would not matter this time; nothing mattered this time. Regardless of how much he wished from her, wished to take, he could not get her pregnant. He could never give her that.

Faith had thought that, with the act itself being so abysmal, it must only be the results that drove women into conjugal relations. That in being defiled, a woman would at least get something out of it in the long run. Not so for her.

Nevertheless, even swamped by disappointed dreams and broken hopes, still she hungered. Faith had been cheated as well as humiliated. And here was a man who could not take her virginity even as she could not take his child. There was an odd kind of freedom to it. And freedom made her bold. She thought she might finally understand what had truly been denied her those many months earlier. When she had yearned and risked and earned nothing but someone else’s sweat and a lifetime of regrets.

Faith knew how to catch Channing, too. For she had taken note of all the times his firm hands had tightened at her back while they danced, and catalogued the many ways his cool eyes moved over her. She had a very good idea of how to be bold with a werewolf. With this werewolf.

She tilted her head back and offered him the long, soft column of her throat.

His breath hitched and the ice chips glittered above her, like snowflakes set in alabaster.