Two Wolves and a Candy Seller [Werewolf Castle 1] (2 page)

There was one other little detail as well. Two male wolves shared the one human female, and only a certain type of woman was strong enough to accept so intense a relationship.

Fortunately Grigori had promised to keep searching for a woman they could share, and now that more people were working at the castle and visiting it, Ms. Right might even come to them.

Jairus snatched his beeping cell phone and hit speaker.

“Did you walk past the candy store?” asked Grigori.

“Huh? What?” Technically he supposed he had. He’d had to pass all the village traders to enter the castle proper. But it wasn’t like he was looking in there for a sugar hit or anything.

“Damask Lambert. Red hair, fair skin, freckles on her nose, hazel eyes, the most mouthwatering figure you could imagine, and my guess would be the passion that matches the hair. We need to meet her properly.”

Jairus threw the towel onto the bed with his cell phone and unzipped his suitcase, looking for some clean underwear and socks. He was almost certain he still had one clean set left. “The description sounds very enticing. I expect to meet with the Alpha pretty soon and I’ll come down into the courtyard after that.”

“I’ll be waiting for you there. Did you bring me back anything from Austria?”

Jairus laughed. “I did. There’s genuine Austrian mud and dirt on my car.”

“Not what I had in mind. If we take Damask anywhere on a date we’ll use my car.” Grigori clicked off the call and Jairus laughed, turning to his closet for some clean jeans and a tidy shirt ready to report to the Alpha. He couldn’t help smiling at the thought that maybe Grigori had found them a mate at last. And a redhead. He’d always been fond of redheads.

* * * *

Grigori wandered out from the castle itself into the inner courtyard. He loved all the noise and excitement of summer, with tourists everywhere filling the building, all on their vacations and having fun. But he liked winter better, when only the pack was in the castle during the week, and he didn’t have to smile at people if he didn’t feel like it.

He’d traveled with Jairus a couple of times, when Jairus had been sent by the Alpha to find out information on some of the other werewolf packs. But his English wasn’t really good enough to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, and even in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland not everyone seemed to speak German in public. Not that his German was all that wonderful either. Jairus, however, understood a lot of what he heard, although the English-speakers in the castle insisted his friend massacred grammar and had an atrocious accent. Grigori thought likely it didn’t matter. Jairus was there mostly to listen, rather than to speak.

His own job was much more boring than Jairus’s. Whereas Jairus traveled Europe, seeking information to help guide the pack in its decision-making, Grigori sat at his computer upgrading the castle website and Facebook pages, tweeting about happenings at the castle, and answering questions and comments. Today he’d spent a pleasurable hour trolling through medieval menus and forwarded his findings to the head chef, a man determined to keep the castle offerings as close as possible to the time period but still edible to people with modern palates.

In those days people didn’t like to eat their vegetables raw, and a lot of meals were basically a thick soup into which grains and vegetables were thrown, as well as anything else available including berries and nuts. Grigori was pretty sure if the chef served vegetable and berry soup, today’s guests wouldn’t even taste it. “Werewolf Stew” on the other hand was a hot seller with the tourists, and was always on the menu. The meat in it, however, was beef, not wolf.

Grigori was very tempted to enter the candy store so he could gaze some more at the lovely Damask. But that seemed rather unfair now he’d mentioned her to Jairus. If she was to be theirs, they needed to approach her and woo her together, as was the way of their people nowadays. The pack was also very much a BDSM community. Not that every member practiced the lifestyle, but more that as a group, they had a lot of Doms and inside the pack people were open to scenes of Dominance and submission. The shortage of women, which the current Alpha’s policies were gradually addressing, also meant that being more open about their tastes for BDSM took some of the pressure off men hungering for their mate as well as the opportunity to practice BDSM.

One of the castle dungeons only accessible from the east wing had been set up as a BDSM venue with a huge range of equipment and toys, guaranteed to turn punishment into exquisite pleasure. Grigori really hoped Damask would be interested in joining them, in the dungeon as well as the bedroom. Always assuming she was interested in joining them at all, of course.

However, the mere fact she was working here spoke volumes for her heritage and interests. A lot of the workers were werewolves who lived in the castle. A small contingent were werewolves from another pack up in the mountains, who’d begun sending some of their young people here to gain some experience of the outside world before letting them loose in a larger city. An even smaller group was humans who lived and worked among the werewolves, perfectly content with the fact they were a different species. Since Damask was human, Grigori was eagerly looking forward to hearing her story, and finding out how she’d become connected to their community.

It was hard to woo a woman first, and then tell her she’d been dating a couple of werewolves. If the woman knew all along about their species the wooing could be much more carefree, Grigori thought. And that made him happy. When he and Jairus had not met any woman who appealed to them on Grigori’s few trips for the Alpha, he’d been quite downhearted, wondering how they’d ever find a mate. Seeing Damask arrive to work in the candy store had filled him with hope and he was aching for Jairus to meet her before any other men had a chance to fall in love with her.

Not that he was in love with her precisely. After all he didn’t know her yet. But she was beautiful and sweet and gentle, endlessly patient with the customers in the store and always smiling at everyone. She was either the world’s best saleswoman or else a truly lovely person, and he was willing to gamble on the latter.

He sat on a bench enjoying the sunshine, watching the crowds milling about, and smiling at the children and adults entering the maze. Since the castle was opened to tourists, the hedge of the maze was neatly clipped to about seven feet high, to prevent people looking over the top and working out where they needed to go next. Everyone who lived here had learned the pattern to follow to find their way to the center and get out again by the time they were in middle school. But to someone who’d never been before it was a lot of fun finding themselves in dead-ends or heading back to the beginning again.

He had to hide a grin at some of the adults just past the entry, carefully drawing a map of which way they’d turned at each intersection. They’d never really get lost. The wolves on duty kept a strict headcount of how many people were in the maze at any one time, and there were a couple of tall ladders they could climb to find anyone who became distressed.

Grigori closed his eyes and enjoyed being outside during the day instead of stuck at his desk. He wondered what news Jairus had to tell the Alpha this time. Was it time for them to “come out” as it were and join the werewolf association? To become part of the wider werewolf community? Or were they wiser to stay semihidden and keep their own counsel? He looked forward to having some long talks with his best friend about the options, and hearing all his news.

But most of all Grigori thought about Damask. Would she agree to date them? What sort of activities would she enjoy doing? He knew which ones he wanted to do, but since they all included handcuffs, chains, ropes, and a bed, none of them were suitable for a first date. A first date needed to be something innocuous like a movie or going out to dinner. He liked the idea of a meal, since then they could all sit and talk. And maybe dancing afterward so he could hold her in his arms and perhaps even kiss her. Grigori rather thought anything more than a really nice kiss on a first date probably wasn’t going to happen.

Which brought him back to the first question. Would she even talk to them, far less agree to date them. He sighed. There would be no answer to that question until Jairus finished his interview with the Alpha and came out here.

* * * *

Damask was almost certain there had not been candy stores in the Middle Ages, and if there had been, the serving maids would not have worn fine woolen dresses with white linen aprons. But she wasn’t complaining. As a uniform, it was a lot better than the kind of outfit she’d be wearing at a fast food restaurant. Besides, some of the candy they sold was time appropriate. The honeyed sweetmeats and sugared plums and candied dates, for example. Even Turkish delight had likely arrived from the Middle East via returning soldiers from the Crusades. Possibly. Maybe. Ah well, she didn’t really care. It was way better than flipping burgers.

And thanks to her warring parents they were the only jobs she was qualified for. Her dad was a werewolf who’d left his pack long before and eventually married a human. He hadn’t bothered to tell her mother about his otherness, and it wasn’t until she’d arrived home early from a visit to her sister one evening, and found her precious baby girl alone playing with a very large dog, that he’d been forced to explain his differences to her.

Her dad had managed to convince his wife not to leave him and take their daughter with her, but it had been a marriage with a lot of arguments interspersed with icy cold silences, and Damask had been the most overprotected child in history. Her father was terrified his wife really would leave him and take the child if he so much as let her get the hem of her dress dirty. And as for climbing a tree, playing sports, or learning pretty much anything useful that would train her for a job, all such subjects and activities were completely banned.

Damask had tried and tried to get her parents to allow her to go to college, any college, without success. But finally they’d agreed to let her work here, just for the summer. At least that was something. Hopefully by the time the tourist season ended she’d have managed to wiggle her way into a job somewhere else. Some of the other people working here had to have winter jobs. They couldn’t all be college students on vacation or residents of the castle.

Besides, this place was awesome. So far, on her lunch breaks she’d wandered around the other stores and gotten herself lost in the maze a couple of times. Soon she’d do the full tour of the castle. She’d only peeked into a few of the main rooms as yet. And then there were the dungeons. They were right at the top of her to-do list. Thanks to the privacy of the Internet, Damask had quite a good idea of the pleasures that could happen in a dungeon and she was almost certain from some overheard conversations that some of the werewolves living here were practitioners of BDSM.

Of course the tourists thought the whole “werewolf” thing was just a trick to bring in customers, but the only reason her mother had agreed she could work here was because she knew some of the wolves and trusted the Alpha. Not that her father was a member of the pack, more that he was loosely associated with it. He was very much the lone wolf, not a pack animal at all. Her mother had finally agreed Damask was old enough—having just turned twenty-one—to spend a few months away from home working over summer.

Everyone else Damask knew had been going to summer camp by the time they were in middle school, and had left home and gone to college at eighteen. She hadn’t even been allowed to get her driver’s license until she was older than all her friends. Likely she’d still be relying on her parents to take her everywhere if her mother hadn’t gotten sick one winter and been unable to drive her around when her dad was at work and her dad had finally let her sit the test.

Anyway, she was here now, and as far as Damask was concerned this was just a stepping stone—although a really entertaining one—on the road to her getting a real job and leaving home for good.

Damask caught the gaze of a deliciously muscular man, looking through the candy store window. He was seated well back from the store on one of the benches where people ate their lunches, but he seemed to be looking right at her. His broad shoulders stretched his white T-shirt in the most delightful way possible, and she could see bulging biceps and solid muscles in his arms. His hair was dark and his skin tanned as if he often worked outdoors.

She wondered if he worked here, or even lived here. She had the vague impression she’d seen him before, but she couldn’t have really looked at him or she’d definitely remember him. She wouldn’t mind brushing up against what she was sure would be a hard and toned body, in a crowd. It was such a shame he was out there and she was in here. His hair looked thick and silky and just long enough for her to grip when he kissed her.
Yeah. Right. Like that’ll ever happen!

Damask was distracted by an older woman. “I need nine lollipops and every one must be different from all the others. I have nine grandchildren, you see.”

“And you don’t want them arguing about which one is theirs?” guessed Damask. She pulled a handful of lollipops from the big glass jar and they sorted out six different ones very easily. The lady pointed to a seventh, and then Damask spotted an eighth design still in the jar, which took a bit of digging to retrieve, and finally a ninth. By the time she looked out the window again the man was gone
. Dammit.
She’d enjoyed looking at him.
Oh well.