Free Come Moonrise by Lucy Monroe Page A

never lied to her, nor was he the
delusional type. And then there was the wolf incident...the things
he knew he could not have known if he hadn't been there, hadn't had
the sharp hearing of a wolf. This was all real. Too real.
    His hand gripped hers more tightly, as if an
involuntary reaction to her words. "One mate, one mating," he said,
each word spaced for hard emphasis.
    " That would mean that last night you were a
virgin ." She was back to practically
shrieking.
    He winced at the volume of her voice.
"Yes."
    " Impossible ."
    His frown turned to a smug, mocking smile.
"Thank you. I’d hate to think I didn’t live up to your ex-fiancé
and other lovers."
    "There were no other lovers besides him,
but..." Her voice trailed off because she didn’t know what else she
wanted to say. "I’m finding all of this really hard to digest."
    She would not admit that the part she found
hardest to digest was his affection for Olivia. She could live with
him being a werewolf...she thought...but she couldn’t live with
that.
    "Considering how hard we work to hide our
existence from humans, that's no surprise. You're having to replace
a lifetime of myth with a very different reality regarding our
kind." The anger seemed to have drained out of him, leaving him
thoughtful. "What does surprise me is the fact you seem to believe
me. I thought it would take witnessing my change for you to accept
what I am."
    She wasn't bringing up the incident when she
was fifteen. His knowledge of her self-pleasuring while she
daydreamed of him was way too embarrassing. She settled for saying,
"You’ve never lied to me."
    "No, I haven’t."
    Thinking of a couple of things he’d said to
her the day before made her heart cramp in pain. He’d said, or at
least implied, he didn’t love her like a woman he wanted to marry.
He’d also said any physical intimacy between them would be nothing
more than sex.
    She didn’t want to face those revelations
right now, but the pain refused to be dismissed in order to be
dealt with when she was ready. It pulsed inside her in a steady,
aching rhythm.
    She pulled her hand from his grasp and
scooted toward the edge of her side of the bed.
    His eyes narrowed at her movement.
    "If I marry you, you’re stuck with me as
your mate for the rest of our lives?"
    "I told you, I’m already stuck. The minute I
put my cock inside you, we were mated."
    "That can’t be." Though if sex equaled
mating and mating equaled some kind of permanent werewolf marriage
ritual, then he really was stuck with her.
    No matter how either of them felt about
that.
    "So, even if I walk away..."
    "I cannot take another mate."
    "That’s not fair."
    "Fair isn’t in the equation."
    No, it wasn’t. She either consigned herself
to marriage to man who didn’t love her, or consigned the man she
loved to life-long celibacy. After last night and this morning, she
didn’t think he would thank her for that. "You should have warned
me of the consequences. I had a right to know."
    "You didn’t give me the chance. I told you
to leave. You wouldn’t go." His voice was rough, like he was angry
again and the expression in his blue eyes had turned accusing.
    But remembering how he had responded to her
presence made her balk at accepting all the guilt for their current
predicament. "You didn’t want me to. Not really."
    "Like hell."
    Disbelief rolled through her. She’d never
known Ty to shirk responsibility for his own actions like this.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t like the results, but that didn’t mean he
got to blame her for them.
    "You didn’t try very darn hard to get rid of
me," she reminded him.
    "I couldn’t," he gritted out, sounding
really disgusted with himself.
    "I don’t buy it. You are one of the most
self-disciplined people I know."
    "Everyone has their limits. I reached
mine."
    "Right. I’m irresistible."
    "Last night you were...to me."
    His obstinate denial of any culpability for
their time together added more pain to the cauldron boiling