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Esabel helped Wolfe to her rooms then got him on the bed before she closed the door and locked it, after that she stripped down and got into the bed next to him. She cuddled in against him, her head resting on his chest.

Nalyne had given him the energy he needed. Lily had healed the most recent wounds. While he was scarred from the attack and some of those wounds hadn’t healed fully yet, Esabel simply laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes as she listened to his heartbeat.

“Esabel’s glad that the Meanies didn’t killed you, Puppy…” she whispered to him softly, talking about the creatures that had attacked them to begin with.

They’d been going after some information on Goh’s new servants, the ones trying to bring him back and the ones responsible for the attacks on Esabel and Ilea. But the creatures had ambushed them.

Esabel called them ‘Meanies’ and they had been very vicious fighters. They’d both fought well and had nearly managed to survive it but one of the creatures had gotten in a lucky hit to Esabel and she’d gone down. After that, Wolfe had reacted predictably to her condition, as any true Alpha male would when his chosen mate was in such danger: he went into a Rage. Esabel remembered seeing him go down under a great many of the creatures before she blacked out, thinking that he’d died under the onslaught just as the guards had thought when they’d found Esabel.

What the guards didn’t know was that the creatures had taken their dead with them and had tried to take Wolfe with them as well, carrying him a good distance from Esabel and preventing anyone from finding him until he’d healed enough to come after her.

She snuggled in against him even more, shifting to bury her face in the spot between his chest and his shoulder where his body naturally curved and gave her a place to turn her face into without shifting too much. She knew that while she enjoyed and even loved pain, Wolfe only liked it when they were having their ‘bedtime fun’. She knew he had to be in pain because she was still hurting as well despite how much she’d been healed thanks to Lancaster.

“Esabel don’t like it when peoples get killeded… First Daddy Gin and Mommy Ren… And everyone else there… All of Esabel’s babysitters is dead too… Hal is gone, the only human to be nice to Esabel… Then you was killeded… Esabel don’t want anyone else to go away… But Ilea’s sick now… Soon she won’t be able to dodge the ‘ssassins after her and one will get her… Master is trying to come back an’ he’ll kill Lily an’ everyone else and then Esabel will be all alone an’ have to run away from him,” she was getting further into her fear of Goh returning and unable to pay attention to when Wolfe was finally able to shift.

Very few things frightened Esabel but the worst was her creator. She feared him above everything else despite the fact that she, Ilea, and Lily had killed him the last time. A great many beings feared Goh for good reason. He was an ex-god, after all…

By the time he finished with her, Esabel was perfectly willing to let him curl around her. Wolfe certainly knew how to come home in style and her body was still giving off shivers of pleasure from time to time as he held her and trailed his fingers over her skin lightly, even tracing over some of the marks he’d given her from time to time. Apparently just to watch her reactions to it, from the smile on his face every time he did it.

And she had plenty of marks to show this time. He hadn’t even bothered with any of the playtoys she had, he’d simply used teeth and claws to perfection as well as leaving some very nice bruises in all the right places. He hadn’t gone unmarked either, but her marks were limited to bites and scratchmarks left by her nails, so she couldn’t mark him up as much as he did her. Then again, it was probably a good thing that she couldn’t. while he didn’t mind the small pains her marks gave, he wouldn’t have liked the major pains her favorite kind of marks would have left him with.

As it was, she still wasn’t allowed over at the prison without someone else with her. Her last few trips through there unsupervised had left the place very empty… Then again, this time Lily had saved a few of the ones she’d interviewed for the position of Esabel’s babysitter back when they’d been trying to find some way of keeping her alive…

While her room had been cleaned up, there was no way to hide the fact that someone else had woken her up and healed her, to the point that she really did need to get rid of the staples and stitches before they grew into her skin. Hell, Wolfe should have been able to smell the Harvester on her skin before he’d covered it with his own scent.

But she didn’t know how to explain that one. Instead, her eyes kept threatening to roll up in her head every time he traced over a claw mark or one of the bite marks he’d given her…

Esabel loved the kiss and even made plenty of noises that proved that she loved the kiss. She even whimpered when he pulled back from getting her nicely worked up for more of the kiss and everything that came after it. But then he was standing beside the bed and saying that they needed to get cleaned up and going and she actually pouted over it, looking absolutely adorable in the process.

But she only pouted for a moment. After all, she could misbehave a lot in the shower…

So she took his hand and let him help her up from the bed. Then she was glad for his hand and his quick reflexes when her legs decided not to hold her weight, though that just made her give a soft giggle as he scooped her in against him and simply carried her into her playroom and the shower in there.

Of course, looking at her playroom just hit home to them both how long he’d been gone from the layer of fine dust on the torture table. As they passed through, though, she started scratching at the stitches in one of her wounds and finally made an annoyed sound over it, “Before we clean up, Puppy, Esabel’s got to get the stitches and staples out. They itch…” she growled out, clearly annoyed at the itching.

But it said a lot that she was trusting him to take out the stitches and staples considering where some of her injuries were… In the attack, she’d taken a lot of wounds to her back (and backside) before they’d taken her down and tried to gut her-

Alright, they HAD gutted her and Ilea had put all of that back together. But it had been a very close thing. Esabel could actually die from bloodloss, beheading, or mushrooms. The creatures that had attacked them had tried two of those on her and had almost succeeded.

The rest of her wounds were to her belly and throat. Truthfully, only Ilea’s skills had saved Esabel at all. But the stitches and staples had to come out now in order for the wounds to finish healing or the skin wound grow around them and she’d have to be sliced into to get them out.

While she liked getting cut in the right moments, having it done to get the staples out would have totally not been fun for her.

“The stuff to get them all out should be in one of the drawers in here,” she said rather vaguely. Of course, whenever someone was strapped down to her table, they usually didn’t need stitches or staples since they usually wound up getting carried out while being very dead… So the removal equipment was reserved for her personal use, which she usually tended to need thanks to her ideas of ‘fun’ for herself. She tended to like getting sliced up, cut up, clawed up… In short, she liked everything he usually did to her plus getting sliced by a blade while strapped to her own table. Most people didn’t understand her needing her ‘playroom’ but most people didn’t have her issues when she went too long without ‘playing’ or being played with…

With Wolfe in her life, she didn’t need to worry about those side effects and hadn’t mentioned it, or even thought to mention it. And she probably wouldn’t mention it until it became a problem, in true Esabel-fashion, meaning that it wouldn’t even occur to her to say anything about it until it became a problem.

But right now, she was scratching at a slice that went from the front of her thigh, around her hip, up one butt cheek, and up the opposite side of her back. She couldn’t remember if that one actually started in the front or back, but the stitches in it were really itching and it was annoying her. Her other hand was scratching around the staples that closed her belly where she’d been gutted: four deep slices that moved diagonally down her belly from right to left and were obviously deeper than they appeared. Then there were the other injuries that had been stitched up on her… In short, all of that had to come out but would take a while to do accomplish… But she’d just scratch herself raw if he didn’t do it, so there was a major toss up over it: shower first or remove the stuff making her itch…

Esabel found that she liked having stitches and staples removed for the first time and gave him exactly what he was hoping for with the sounds she was making and the fact that she wasn’t able to hold still unless he was holding her down. She loved it when he got playful and teasing. Almost as much as she loved it when he took her over and went all feral on her.

But the playful and teasing stuff hadn’t come out until right before the attack had happened, when he’d finally relaxed enough to open up more with her. Of course, his wolf might have had something to do with that… But she liked to think that it was more that she’d been the cause of it…

She let him tease at her all the way through getting the last stitch out of her butt cheek and only flinched when he bit her unexpectedly there, “Owie, Puppy… If’n you’s wantin’ to play rough, you could just tie your Esabel down for it,” was her only complaint.

Then again, she did have good reason for wanting to be tied down… When he got rougher with her, she loved it but had a tendency to try to move away from it even though she always wanted more of it. Counter productive, yes, but that was the way it went.

She sat up on her knees and turned to face him, letting her hands move slowly up his chest until she could cup his face and pull him down for another of the really heated kisses she loved so much; the kind where they kissed hard and heated and even nipped at each other’s lips.

She really wanted him to tie her up, though. She’d missed that just as much as she’d missed him and was proving it as she shifted her hands to dig her nails into the back of his shoulders, knowing that he reacted to that almost as much as he reacted to their kisses… Or when she mentioned the whips… He’d really liked that one…

Ah, hell, they were perfectly matched in the sack. And the attack had proved that they could fight well together too.

She’d been tossing random energy balls and using a simple dagger to defend them both while he’d used his weapons at the beginning, only going fully wolfy when she’d gone down.

They’d been in other fights and come out fine on the other end of it, though he found that he had to tie her down to the bed after a fight. But the other fights hadn’t been against any of Goh’s creations or anything like that until the last attack.

Right now, though, she was answering his misbehaving with very blatantly obvious misbehaving. She finally looked him in the eyes as she nipped her own lower lip hard enough to draw blood, knowing exactly what that scent would do to him. As proven by the teasingly playful grin she gave right before she leaned in and kissed him hard.

She just gave a soft laugh as her plan worked all too well when his eyes went yellow and he practically tackled her onto the table…


When he was finished with her and carried her into the warm water of the shower, he had to hold her up at first because her legs wouldn’t hold her weight. Again. He was getting really good at that part… Just as she was getting really good at riling him up again… Like when she took over washing him up, that playful grin playing about her lips the entire time…

By the time they finished their shower, Wolfe’s wounds were completely healed and he had to carry her back into the bedroom where they could get dressed. One of the slaves had left him a fresh set of clothes just outside the door. She’d tried to get him to move into her rooms once before and he hadn’t wanted to for some reason that she couldn’t guess at, so she’d left it alone and the slaves continued to keep his room clean and stocked for him while bringing him fresh clothing whenever he was in here with her.

When her legs would hold her, she moved over to her dresser to pull out her usual short-shorts and halter-top in white, since white showed blood better. The only downside to what she wore was that everyone could see every mark he’d put on her as well as the pinkish marks of the attack that would eventually fade into silvery scars. Well, they wouldn’t be the first of her scars and likely wouldn’t be the last.

She finally turned to him once she was dressed and her hair was brushed back from her face, “So we go feed you now, Puppy? Esabel knows how grumpy you's can get when you needs food...” she asked him, still using the nickname she’d given him. Others that had overheard the nickname had laughed at it only once. They hadn’t laughed at it since then and simply gave the pair a wide berth. Well, all except for the slaves. They seemed to have taken her on as a ‘cause’, it seemed.

Wolfe could hear a pair of them easily as they walked away from their rooms, their conversation revolving around the fact that Wolfe hadn’t Marked Esabel as his own. He’d simply decided to stay with her instead of moving on. They knew how much he cherished Esabel and thought that her carrying his Mark on her would show everyone else his claim on the flighty female. They even considered whether or not it would help… stabilize… her personality a bit. They guessed that it wouldn’t and she’d still be just as crazy, but at least no one else would try to make a pass at her as long as she carried his Mark on her.

As their voices faded with distance, one had to wonder about the conversation… And more people than Wolfe had heard it and began to wonder as well…