Free Web NovelChapter 125: 125. Quinlan I
Maisie
Mrs. Chastain had a way about her. You were either so comfortable, you were spilling your deepest, darkest secrets to her, or you were being ordered around and whacked at the back of the head.
The Lycans were in the latter group, and I gaped as she transformed four scary looking Lycans into her serving boys in under an hour. Well, make that five, considering, Mr. Chastain was in the kitchen with them, wearing an apron.
I didn’t think I could’ve been more attracted to them than I was right now.
They were all wearing aprons.
Shirtless. Aprons. Sweaty. Dicing vegetables. Smeared in flour. Dirty.
It was a recipe for disaster.
I shook my head free of images assaulting my mind of being knotted on that kitchen counter. Goddess have mercy, but I could no longer control my thoughts. What was this? Some perverse level of Stockholm? My mind was no longer wholly mine, occupied at every point of the day with sex, heat, pleasure, heat, bodies, mindless fucking.
When I accepted my Lycan’s terms on ’partnership’, I should’ve known it meant feeling years worth of lust. Maybe even decades. Or centuries.
All she wanted to do was rut. It was a struggle, keeping her at bay, filling my head with so much noise, I could drown out her hunger for them.
Last night must’ve have been a projection of it, because I knew there was no way in hell I could’ve done that in my right mind. And I was never, ever going to talk about it. I was going to keep pretending it never happened.
If they wouldn’t talk about it, I wouldn’t talk about it. And if they did talk about it, I would plead the fifth.
The fifth being, "That wasn’t me. It was my Lycan. I could never want you. I’d rather eat sand. Or nails. Or shit."
Voila. Problem solved.
"I hear there are talks of a divorce," Violette said, extending me a flute of champagne. "Having been a victim of territorial Lycan bastards myself, I must apologize on my boy’s behalf. I take a great deal of care ensuring that my children understand that for every action, there is a reward or a consequence."
I took the flute, ducking my head shyly. freēwebnovel.com
Then she leaned into me. For a human, Violette Chastain had the same sense of personal space that the Lycans did. Zero. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. "Let me in on your list of consequences and I will help you exact them."
I blinked. "M-my list?"
She nodded enthusiastically, then paused. "You think you might be able to manage getting away from them?"
I bit the inside of my cheek and peered into the champagne glass, feeling at a loss in front of her. I suddenly felt silly, like a child playing at a game I didn’t understand.
"Oh dear." Violette pinched my chin and lifted her gaze to mine. "There’s nothing wrong with that, amore. But to win a game, you must understand the playing field. Your strengths. Your weaknesses. And vice versa. In your case, you are up against men who do not take no for answer. Men who will hunt you down to the ends of the world if you took flight. Men with all of the money and connections in the world in their pockets for their using. And even worse, you are up against an unbreakable bond. Not very level, is it? Pas du tout."
I shook my head. Juliette had said something similar, hadn’t she?
"And they know this. In fact, they consider it amusing, watching you burrow holes into the soil like a rabbit in hiding. I bet it fascinates them even." Her fingers fell from my chin. "It will not be long before they decide to trap you with a litter, just to keep you from running. Did you know, being pregnant with a Lycan’s child puts you in abominable heat for the entire duration? They say it is the child seeking strength from the parents so it remains strong. That is how Auguste tricked me into marrying him. It was how Auguste tricked me into marrying him. Le salaud. The bastard. You can hardly think straight when they are between your legs all the time, non?"
Then she paused. "Have you been taking the tonics, child?"
Tonics? Contraceptives. I went very still. "I didn’t think... there was a need for it. With the high rate of infertility... and we haven’t—not since—t-the transition—"
She laughed. "We thought so too, until we had Julie. Turned out my very human ovaries decided they wanted to have his children. With any luck, yours might be different. Still, unless you want to begin pumping out babies right now, I suggest you see to it. They won’t tell you, of course. It is in their nature to want to fill you up and keep you swollen and glowing."
Pieces of shit—
I frowned. "Julie? Not Quinlan?"
It only dawned on me then that Violette was very human, and Quinlan was a fully bred Lycan.
Violette smiled softly. "No, child. Quinlan may call me Mama, but I didn’t birth him. Though, he is my son and I love him just as fiercely as I love Julie."
I couldn’t help the question from tumbling off my lips. "And his mother?"
Her eyes coasted over to the kitchen and there was a soft, sad look in his eyes. "Dead. Auguste killed her." Her gaze jerked to me at my sharp inhale. "Oh dear, she deserved it. I would have killed her myself if he hadn’t."
My gaze got drawn to the kitchen at the sound of Quinlan’s laughter. Mercer had him hooked under his arm and they were wrestling like children.
I swallowed. "What happened?"
There was a look beat of silence as we watched Soren grab Jericho’s hair and pushed his face into a bowl of flour, and then cackled delightfully when Jericho punched him right in the gut.
"I took a loan from the wrong man to save my piece of shit ex-husband and found myself lost in a debt I couldn’t repay. I was given the option to pay off in flesh or with blood." Her gaze went distant. "I was brought to a whorehouse and there, I met Seraphine. She was a force of nature. I didn’t know then what Lycans were or that they existed for that matter. But even I knew there was an otherworldly beauty about that woman.
"She was the woman men paid fortunes to spend the night with, and the brothel was her little kingdom."
