Defying Destiny by Olivia Downing Page B

could
    change. She removed her clothing, folding
    it neatly and storing it in a corner. She
    glanced over her shoulder frequently to
    see if Nash was watching her. He never
    made an appearance.
    She pulled his shirt on over her head
    and burrowed into his soft bed. His scent
    engulfed her. It clung to the bedclothes and
    his shirt. Every slight sound made her
    tense with nerves. She kept expecting
    Nash to climb into bed with her, but if it
    weren’t for the occasional scrape of his
    chair at his desk, she would have thought
    she was alone in the house. It was well
    after midnight when sleep finally claimed
    her.

CHAPTER 8

    Nash watched Maralee disappear into
    his room, longing to follow her. He
    listened to the sounds of her undressing
    and wondered why the thought of her
    naked made his heart thud so violently and
    his human cock grow rigid once again.
    Nudity was a natural state of the body. He
    had seen every woman of his pack in
    naked human form dozens of times. The
    thought of Maralee without clothes was
    somehow different. Perhaps it was
    because it wouldn’t be natural for her to
    appear before him without clothes.
    Despite her physical interest in him, he
    knew she was inexperienced. He was
    likewise
    inexperienced
    in human
    expressions of physical intimacy. She had
    seemed aroused by his attentive cleaning
    of her wound and breast, and yet she had
    not thought enough of him to clean his
    wound properly. She had used a wet
    towel, as if the taste of him was unsavory.
    He had used the healing powers of his
    saliva on her wound. Why hadn’t she done
    the same for him? He didn’t understand
    her, but she intrigued him.
    When all sounds coming from the
    bedroom ceased, he turned and went to his
    desk beneath the window. The moon was
    large and bright, but not full. His pack was
    free of its madness for the time being and
    if he fulfilled his obligation, they would
    escape its curse forever. Nash lit
    additional candles and selected several
    books from the shelf. He’d accomplished
    nothing all day. Sweet Maralee was far
    too distracting to allow him to work. It
    was impossible to believe she was the
    same woman who had so viciously
    slaughtered his brother. Had that really
    only been the night before? It didn’t seem
    real, as if it were all part of an alternate
    reality. Cort would be scratching on his
    door any minute now to ask his little
    brother to accompany him on a midnight
    hunt.
    Nash sighed, and sat down at his desk
    with a book. There would be no midnight
    summons at his door ever again.
    He forced his concentration to his
    work. Nash had puzzled over these thick
    volumes for almost a century now, and
    still the answers were no clearer to him
    than when he’d been named the pack’s
    Guardian as a pup. Now that Nash had
    their mortal enemy under his protection,
    perhaps he would gain a sudden
    understanding of the words written by the
    last Guardian who had lived five hundred
    years ago.
    Nash opened the first volume, and
    touched the crumbling, yellowed title
    page. In neat print, the title Of Immortality
    and the Curse was scarcely discernable.
    The ink had faded. Nash had spent many
    long years recopying the words in this
    book to preserve them, but the general text
    did not interest him tonight. Instead, he
    wished to examine the random notes
    written in the margins. At one time, they’d
    been nothing but an annoyance.
    He flipped several pages into the old,
    hand-written manuscript to the description
    of the curse. Nash knew the story well.
    One of his species, a chieftain named
    Burl, had captured a powerful sage. The
    sage had been a philosopher and wizard
    who had procured, in his vast knowledge,
    the secret of life. For reasons undisclosed
    —Nash was certain torture had played a
    part—the sage had worked a spell of
    immortality, granting eternal life to Burl
    and all of his descendants.
    Upon his release, the sage worked a
    second bit of magic—a curse that would
    drive the pack to