The arm moved away and took that calming smell with it. The wolf tried to leap after that scent, tried to follow it, but the other smells held me down. Leopard, rat, and something not furred, not warm. Nothing that would help us.
The wolf clawed at my throat like it was an opening to be dug at, enlarged, so it could crawl out. The wolf couldn't get out, couldn't get out, trapped. Trapped! I tried to scream but a scream wasn't what broke out of my throat; a low, mournful howl spilled out instead. The sound cut through the frantic voices around me, froze the pressing hands. It echoed up and up, dying in the sudden silence. Then as the last quavering echo faded another voice rose, high and sweet. A third voice joined, deeper, so that for an instant their voices entwined in glorious harmony. Then one voice fell octaves lower, breaking the harmony, but the discord had a kind of harmony of its own.
I answered them, and for a moment our voices filled the air with quavering music. The bodies pressing against me slid away. The smell of wolf pressed close. A hand touched my face and I turned in against that hand, pressed it to my face, breathed in the scent of wolf. There were other scents on that hand, a scented map of everything he had touched that day, but under it all was wolf. I tried to raise both hands to press his skin against mine, but only one of my hands would rise. Something was broken in my left shoulder, something that wouldn't let me use that hand. Fear flared through me, and I whimpered, and that warm skin pressed closer to me. I'd never realized that you could cuddle a scent around yourself as if it were an arm. But I hugged that scent around me, smelling it so intently that it spread around me like someone taking me into their arms.
I kept his hand pressed over my nose and mouth, but rolled my eyes up along his arm until I found the black shirt and finally Clay's face. His eyes were wolf eyes, and my wolf knew that I had done that. I had called to his wolf, and it had answered.
The bed moved beside us. I pulled my face away from Clay's skin so I could sniff the air as I turned to look. I saw Graham, but his scent meant more than what my eyes told me. He smelled so warm, so good. I reached my good hand for him, because if I could touch him, I'd carry some of that good, warm smell with me.
My hand touched his chest and only when my hand touched bare skin did I realize he was nude. It was like the hierarchy of reporting from my senses was backward. Smell, touch, sight: primates didn't reason that way, but canids did. Vaguely, I remembered seeing Graham's smooth, muscled body, but he smelled safe and right. Clothes didn't matter to safe and right. But my hand on the warm, bare hardness of his chest startled me, as if I hadn't expected it. I wasn't thinking straight.
I stiffened my arm, pushing against his chest, as he tried to get closer to me. Now that I was seeing him, and not just looking at him, I could see that he wasn't unhappy to be nude in front of me. That pissed me off. I ached, my muscles burning, hurt in places that I shouldn't even be able to feel, and he was excited about getting our nude bodies up close and personal. Damn him.
I found I still had a human voice. «No.» My voice was hoarse and abused, but it was still clear. «No.»
Claudia appeared near the head of the bed. «I told him to get undressed, Anita. You need as much skin-to-skin contact as you can get.»
I tried to shake my head, found it hurt, so just said, «No.»
She knelt beside the bed, pleading at me with her eyes. It was a look I'd never seen from her. «Anita, they're all the wolves we have right now, please, don't make this harder.»
I swallowed and it hurt, as if I'd damaged things in my throat that wouldn't heal for a while. «No.»
Jean-Claude came to stand beside her kneeling figure. «Please, ma petite, do not be stubborn, not now.»
I frowned at him. What was I missing? What was I not understanding? Something. Something important, by the looks on their faces, but I just didn't want Graham to put his naked, erect body up against my naked body. I did not want to have sex with him, and once we were naked and in bed the odds of that went up. Sure, I was hurt, and I'd supposedly fed the ardeur really well, but call me paranoid, I just didn't want to risk it. But for my last shreds of moral dignity, Graham could have been in the running for daddy-to-be. That, more than anything else, kept my arm straight, and my lips saying no.
Claudia said, «You don't understand, it's not over.»
«What isn't over?» I managed to say it, in that deep, not-me voice, and then I knew. The wolf had thought it was getting out, getting help, that the pack would help it escape, free it from this prison, but I'd kept the feel of other wolves at bay. I'd refused to let them slide wolf scent and skin over my body, so the wolf went back to trying to get out and join them.
My arm didn't stay stiff, nothing on me did. I writhed on the bed like a bag of snakes, muscles and tendons moving in ways that should have ripped me apart. My skin should have split, and I almost wanted it to; I wanted the wolf to get out of me. To just stop hurting me. I'd thought the wolf was me; now I thought it was trying to kill me.
The smell of wolf was everywhere, thick and nose-wrinkling, sweet musk. My body lay still on the bed while tears leaked down my face, and I whimpered, not wolf sounds, but small, hurt, human ones. I thought I'd hurt before, but I'd been wrong. If you could force someone to feel this forever, they'd tell you anything, do anything, to make it stop.
I was lying between Graham and Clay. Their naked bodies were pressed as close as they could get, without putting any of their weight on top of me, as if they knew that that would hurt. They cradled me gently between them, their hands on my head, and on my good shoulder. They touched me as if I'd break, and it felt like they were right.
Graham's eyes had bled back to brown. The look on his face was worried. What had they seen that I hadn't? What was happening to me? Clay leaned over, pressed his lips against my cheek, and kissed me, gently. He whispered, «Change, Anita, just let it happen. It won't hurt like this, if you just let it happen.»
He raised his face up, and I saw that he was crying.
I heard the soft click as the door opened. I wanted to turn and look, but it had hurt the last time I did it. It didn't seem worth it. Besides, Graham's chest was blocking my view in that direction.
«How dare you order me into your presence?» Richard's voice, already angry.
«I tried to make it a request,» Jean-Claude said, «but you did not respond.»
«So you order me, like I'm your dog?»
«Ma petite needs your aid,» and Jean-Claude's voice held that first hint of anger, as if he was as tired of Richard's moods as I was.
«From what I can see,» Richard said, «it looks like Anita has plenty of help.»
Clay sat up enough to show a tear-stained face. «Help her, Ulfric. We are not strong enough.»
«If you want tips for satisfying her in bed, ask Micah; I'm really not that into sharing.»
«Are you Ulfric to her lupa, or not?» Micah came to stand at the foot of the bed, still nude, just like we'd woken up.
«That's wolf business, kitty-cat, not yours.»
«Stop it,» Clay yelled, «stop being an asshole, Richard, and be our leader. Anita is hurt.»
Richard finally came to the edge of the bed to peer over Graham's reclining body. His hair was sleep tousled, a thick brown-gold mass around his arrogantly handsome face. The arrogance slipped, and the guilt I'd begun to dread almost as much replaced it.
«Anita…«He made a painful sound of my name, so much pain in that one word. He crawled onto the bed, and showed that he was still wearing shorts. He'd either taken the time to dress, or slept clothed, very unlycanthrope. The other men made room for him, but they didn't leave the bed. He started to crawl over me, but the first touch tore small pain noises from me. He went up on his hands and knees above me, keeping his weight off me, but my wolf was too close to the surface. Richard putting himself above us like that meant he thought he was superior to us and my wolf didn't think he'd earned that. Neither did I.
I felt the wolf crouch to spring. Felt it gather itself as if it could spring from my body to Richard's. I had a moment to realize that it could do just that. I'd felt Richard's beast and one of mine fight once. It had hurt. I was already hurt. I did not want to do this.
«Move, Richard.» My voice was an abused whisper.
«It's all right, Anita, I'm here.»
I put my good arm against his chest and pushed. «Move, now.»
«You're in a dominant position over her,» Graham said, «I don't think she likes it.»
Richard looked at him, while his body stayed over mine. «She's not a wolf, Graham, she doesn't think like that.»