The Outlands Shifter by Anna Durand

Author:Anna Durand [Durand, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: paranormal romance, time travel, shifters
ISBN: 9781949406597
Publisher: Jacobsville Books
Published: 2021-05-24T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Kylie

On the trek back to town, Nathaniel doesn't speak—not even when I speak to him. No matter how many dumb jokes I make or how many times I teasingly tell him I'd love to lick him like a big wolfie fudge pop, he doesn't respond. Okay, maybe he didn't understand what a fudge pop is. But that doesn't fully explain his behavior. He has retreated into a distance I can't see, somewhere I can't follow him.

We just had sex, for heaven's sake. Couldn't he at least be polite?

I feel a little queasy now, and it's not only because we're getting closer and closer to town, closer and closer to the creepy residents of that town. When Nathaniel and I had made love, it had been more than a way to get off. It felt…intimate. He'd shown me how to make us both come, shown me what he liked, and known exactly what I needed. Most of the time, he's gruff and grumpy. But in that cave, he let me see another aspect of him, his tender and passionate side.

God, I love that part of him. I want him to be that way all the time, but maybe I have to accept that he has valid reasons for closing himself off.

Once we're alone in his ironclad bedroom, he'll loosen up again. Right?

The town looms not far ahead of us, maybe a hundred feet away.

A wind kicks up, swirling dust around us and fluttering his leather coat. He stares straight ahead, his eyes narrowed, and strides across the desert with all the gritty determination of a werewolf sheriff in the Wild West.

But I can't stand the quiet anymore. "Nathaniel, I—"

"Silence."

"Uh, sorry, it doesn't work that way. I'm not your prisoner or your servant." I grab his arm, yanking until he stops walking, though he doesn't look at me. "I'm the girl you screwed in a mystical cave and shared all your secrets with, so don't act like that means nothing."

A muscle jumps in his jaw.

"Talk to me, Nathaniel."

He rotates his face toward me almost in slow motion, his expression shuttered behind an impenetrable barrier. "I am afraid, child, that is exactly what it meant. Nothing. The beast in me needed a release, and I took it from the nearest available female body. If I've broken your tender heart, that's none of my concern."

My throat tightens up, and I feel the first sting of tears that want to form. No, I will not cry. No way. He looks and sounds like an unfeeling bastard, but I'm not buying it for one second. Well, okay, maybe I buy it for, like, a millisecond. I can't help feeling kind of rejected and used, but this is not the real Nathaniel Fortescue. It's his fear talking, not the man I got naked with inside a cave full of mysterious paintings that come to life.

"Don't do that," I say. "Don't shut me out because you're freaked by the fact you took my virginity. What you need to do is talk to me, not slam the door in my face.

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