The Reluctant Read Online Free

spinning a little, probably from hunger,
fatigue, and stress, but mostly from the proximity of
him.
    He stepped closer to me slowly. I
could have stepped back if I chose; there was nothing impeding me.
But for some reason, I let him pull at the distance between
us.
    “Will you stay with me, Emily?” he
asked earnestly.
    I swallowed what little spit I had in
my throat. My mouth was suddenly dry and I felt the urge to lick my
lips—as if he would kiss me and I needed to be prepared.
    “What are you doing to me?” I asked,
voice trembling.
    He reached up and stroked my face,
leaning in to nuzzle my neck and kiss it. He pulled back just a bit
and stared into my eyes. Those emerald eyes, bright and alert,
looking at my boring brown ones for acceptance. My heart pounded
against my chest. He looked at me like he wanted to swallow me
whole, but protect me from the world by doing so.
    His hands never stopped stroking me.
“Your body responds to mine, even if you haven’t accepted it in
your head yet.”
    “But I don’t know you.”
    His hand trailed down to my
collarbone. “Your body does.”
    A calm awareness of my situation
overtook me amidst the confused state of enmity between my mind and
body. Yes, I was in the house of a stranger and I shouldn’t talk to
strangers. Yes, I had been raised to know that even the
best-looking men could have the worst intentions. And yes, of
course I knew that sex was not the answer to any
question.
    But goddamn, he was so hot.
    And as his mouth met mine and his
blistering breath filled me, I opened myself to his control and the
possibility that maybe, just maybe, everyone else was wrong about
the rules of the world—at least that’s went through my mind when he
kissed and caressed me. I may have freed myself had his hands been
not quite so liberating in their own right.

    Will

    You won’t believe that I never meant
to hurt you that first time. I had to have you right then or become
a monster from my anguish. I don’t know how you’ll ever understand
what drives me, but maybe this will help.
    After a fairly normal childhood in
Mexico with my mother, we moved to California so, as she told me, I
could attend a better school. I learned later it was to keep me
away from the Clan. At this point, as a ten-year old child, I was
human and in constant danger from my mother’s violent family. My
father was Lycanti and my mother Lycanthrope: my father, a
Changeling forced into the order by my pure-blooded mother to serve
as a mate. The gene is carried only by males, but my mother was
breeding before she changed him, hence a very human Will as a
child. I always wondered if she planned it that way.
    Unlike my best friend, I did not grow
up in the Clan. The Lycanthrope stay clear of North America because
of the overreaction by law enforcement. You’ll probably never meet
one here. Even the murder of the most base human being is
investigated, it’s ridiculous. In South America and Mexico, things
are much more lax. Police down there have even taken to
affectionately calling them “bounty hunters.” They don’t know what
the Lycanthrope really are, of course. They only know that the
marked victims die with much blood, and are always guilty of past
crimes. Most of the Clan makes their living collecting rewards for
turning over the bodies of rapists and murderers. Perhaps my mother
did not want that life.
    Of course, my father knew none of this
when he went to Mexico with some friends and seduced what he
thought was a dark-skinned beauty who loved him equally
possessively. When she became pregnant, he was overjoyed at the
thought of taking her home to California and having a normal life.
Imagine his surprise when she began disappearing for days at a time
with strange men for long runs as their true selves. She can change
at will, except for when the full moon calls to her, of course. She
is much more in control of their emotions. As you’ve seen through
me, Lycanti cannot control it. It is a