Pack Law Made Him My Brother, So I Made Him My Mate novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: First Snow

The first snow came down on the twenty-fourth of October, soft and thick.

By midnight the yard was white to the corral rails.

I put on my boots and my mother's old coat and walked across it with a flashlight I did not turn on.

His casita sat at the far end of the corral wall, a one-room adobe with a tin chimney and a lamp in the window.

Rule one was behind me, in the main house, asleep.

I knocked once and opened the door.

He was sitting on the edge of a wide old bed with a book in his hands.

He looked up and did not seem to believe I was there.

"Rule one," he said.

"Rule one says not in the main house."

"This is not the main house," he said.

"I read the rule closely."

He put the book on the floor.

I shut the door, shook the snow from my hair, and stood on the rag rug while he looked at me.

The room was small and warm and smelled of piñon smoke and sheep wool.

A black stove ticked in the corner.

The bed had a carved headboard and a Navajo blanket in red and gray.

The lamp threw a soft gold circle over all of it.

"My grandfather built that bed," he said. "I've never had anyone in it."

"Nobody?"

"I've never wanted anyone in it."

I took off my mother's coat and hung it on a nail.

I took off my boots, my sweater, and my jeans, one at a time, while he watched.

I stood in front of the stove in a white cotton T-shirt and nothing else, and let the heat touch my legs.

"Come here," he said.

I went.

He took my hips in his hands and drew me between his knees.

He pressed his face to my stomach through the shirt, and I felt him breathe in, long and slow.

"You smell like snow," he said.

"You smell like sheep."

"I washed," he said.

"You smell like sheep and woodsmoke, and I want to lick you."

He laughed, and it shook through both of us.

He pulled the T-shirt up over my head and let it fall.

He looked at me for a long moment in the lamplight, and he did not touch.

"Slowly," he said. "We have all night."

"You have to stop being polite."

"I'm not being polite," he said.

"What are you doing?"

"Learning you."

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