He had trouble getting his tongue around the words, but finally he said, “I couldn’t--get through--those cats fast enough.”
I wrinkled my nose. I mean, jeez. I’ve never been into killing, and they gotta be my relatives. Right?
Distant cousins. I don’t think about it.
And they did attack him.
“I knew...he...was going to get to you before I did.”
I felt a shudder go through that big, strong garou. It’s one of the things I love about him. He doesn’t hold back. He’s secure enough in who he is that it doesn’t occur to him that someone else might see a shudder as a weakness. But then, if it is a weakness, I like it. I like knowing that thinking about me, or losing me, makes him tremble.
He complained, “Did you have to go as far into cat country as you could get?”
I thumped his chest. “Yes. I thought, if you were coming, you’d catch up. I mean, Gaia, Bark. You’re twice my size. I was wondering what was taking you so long. Leo--”
Leo and Tommy never took days to find me.
I could tell he didn’t like what I was going to say about that, so I just switched over to, “I didn’t know how far to run.”
He sighed. “I had to take care of your path. Make sure no one else could follow. I don’t know how
he
stayed on the trail.”
“Daddy is...”
Before I could think of a descriptive word, Bark hushed me with a kiss. And then he said, “Out of our lives.” And he kissed me again. I could tell he was relieved at that.
Eyes closed, he swallowed me up in his arms, pressed his lips to mine, and said, “It’s me and you, cat.”
I kissed him back. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pouted a little. “You okay with that?”
His lips turned up, and his warm, brown eyes virtually smiled, as he nodded, saying huskily, “Yeah.”
But more important, he showed me how all right he was with it. He blocked out the whole world, the sun, the moon and the stars. Encompassed me, filled me, groaned into me with everything he had. Took me out of the world we’d been living in, shot it all, and wrapped his arms around me, cuddled me to his chest, and reiterated, “Yeah, Le. You and me...is just fine.” He dropped a kiss on my head, and I put one on his chest.
Sighing, I whispered, “Some people will never understand...this.”
Bark tipped my chin up so he could examine my expression. “You’re letting what other people think get to you?”
“You’re the one that said it, Bark. What we have--is taboo.”
Surely, succinctly, he said, “Loving someone is never wrong.”
Every day he proves it to me.
But I’m a wicked cat. I ask...“Is this wrong?” And I try something new on him. With us, nothing is taboo.
Except screwing around.
The End
Carys Weldon is a great fan of the White Wolf Gaming system, especially shape-shifters. She writes her horrific romance from a haunted hollow in the Missouri Ozarks, not far from Branson.
Carys has won over one hundred awards in the last three to four years. Of most recent note in Romance and Erotica: Third place in the RWA Inner Vixen contest with Confessions of a BBW Cover Model, Mays Reviews Over the Moon Award of Excellence for Chaos, and a second place recently in the Writer's Zone Erotica competition at OCW for The Wet Spot.