4. New Acquisitions

Iwoke up, which surprised me. I”d been run down and savaged by a pack of wolfhounds, and my last memory was of looking at someone on the edge of humanity while I bled to death. I wasn”t the sort of person who had visions or hallucinations. I didn”t usually even dream. I owed my aunt an apology for all the times I”d rolled my eyes at her insistence that she”d seen ghosts.

Before that moment, my life had been… well, not normal, precisely, but certainly within the realm of lives a human being could conceivably expect to live. I”d done a lot of unusual things, namely stealing art from wealthy assholes to sell to other wealthy assholes, but all of that still lay within the realm of the possible, however unlikely for the average person.

What had happened in the hills of Ireland wasn”t possible. Those sorts of things only happened in fairytales and myths, and despite the number of crusty old guys at bars who would swear otherwise, myths and legends didn”t walk among us.

Except that maybe I”d be the crusty old guy at the bar now, swearing up and down that I”d encountered the Wild Hunt, and had the scars to prove it.

…Scars.

I”d been chewed up by dogs, and my legs didn”t hurt.

Somehow that stray thought penetrated my muzzy brain enough to make me sit bolt upright, mummy-rising-from-the-grave style, my eyes flying open. My mind wasn”t fully online yet, but a critical part of being a thief is the ability to rapidly incorporate new information, and an attention to detail that would make an IRS auditor weep with pride. So within one thudding heartbeat, my subconscious grabbed all of the signals pouring in through my wide eyes and slammed knowledge into my waking mind, one piece of recognition after another.

One: an enormous black hound was sleeping next to me,

Two: on a massive four-poster bed,

Three: in a room worthy of a castle,

Four: filled with what looked like really expensive art.

Fuck me.

I was mostly naked. Lying on furs. And the hellhound I”d startled awake was looking at me like I was his new best friend, his red tongue lolling out as he panted happily.

There wasn”t blood on my legs or arms. There were dark blue tattoos in the shapes of bite marks from dogs, stylized with loops and whorls in a Celtic-looking style.

I had human feet. No hooves anywhere in sight.

”Holy shit,” I whispered, my voice shaking as I tried very hard not to hyperventilate.

The dog started licking me on my face. That was a no-go for me, not when his bite marks might be tattooed on my limbs.

I scooted off the bed, getting to my feet, deeply grateful both for my bloodstained boxer-briefs and my sports bra.

The hound stood up and shook himself, hopping off the bed with his tail wagging. With his ears perked, he trotted up to me and stuck his nose up against my crotch.

I shoved his huge head away, fending him off. ”Hell, no,” I said, when he tried to get around my hand as I stiff-armed him. ”I only let men put their faces between my legs.”

The dog… changed. It happened in the space of a heartbeat, his shoulders spreading and limbs thickening, until there was a black-haired man on his knees in front of me instead of a pushy hellhound.

He wrapped his hands around the back of my thighs, body heat sinking into me as he looked up into my face with a sultry, red-eyed gaze. ”If that”s what you want,” he said in a musical voice, and ran his mouth and nose against my underwear.

I just stood there, too shocked to react as the black hound ran his tongue up between my legs, licking me with a look of focused bliss on his sharp-boned face.

He smiled up at me, eyes half-lidded, staying there with his cheek leaning against my thigh.

”You… you”re…” I stammered out, turning crimson. Holy shit, the dogs hadn”t just been people. They were people.

The dog inhaled again, with slow savor. ”I”m yours, Lexi,” he said, leaning his face on my thigh with an adoring gaze, his tail doing a slow wag. ”You know my name.”

”No, I… don”t…” I said, trailing off. Because I did know, even though there was no way I could have. His name was Keilain, and he liked to be called Key by those he loved. It came easily to my mind, the memory of it as bone-deep as the knowledge of my own name. The shock of having a man at my feet had nothing to do with seeing him shift, the movement easy and comfortable to my eyes. The black fur running down his spine and the canine ears on a man”s body were as natural as his hound”s form had been. The heat of his body felt like a part of me.

I staggered backwards, shock making my chest tight.

Keilain let me go, still wearing that affectionate expression. He hadn”t shifted fully, fur sprouting halfway down his arms and in a satyr-like spread on his hips and half-canine legs. His appearance reminded me of the mythical adlet, a dog-legged man with a wild nature, and when he smiled I could see the long, blunt canines he”d worn as a hound.

”What are you?” I whispered, backing away from him.

He followed me, shifting back into his canine form as he did, walking with the rolling saunter of a sighthound with his mouth open in a canine smile. ”You already know,” he said, his voice rougher and deeper as a hound, yet still recognizable as his. I hit the wall with a jolt, and Keilain pressed his head against my belly with a happy sigh. ”I”m yours.”

My hands went to his head automatically, no matter that I knew he was a man. In a daze, I started scratching him behind the ears, watching his tail wave through the air.

He made a low, rumbling sound of contentment, the sound so much deeper than that of the dogs I was used to. He was so tall, his shoulders coming up to my navel and his neck and muzzle long enough that he could probably set his chin on my shoulder if he wanted to.

”I don”t understand,” I said, freaked out, but in a dazed way instead of a panicking way. I wasn”t being eaten, and it didn”t seem like I was being imprisoned. I”d obviously been healed and cleaned, though by the tackiness of my skin I thought the latter was probably the dog giving me a bath with his tongue instead of someone sponging me off.

That made me think of him licking my crotch again, and I flushed, embarrassed and a little bit aroused from the mental image of a gorgeous, albeit half-canine man licking my underwear.

”Will you come back to the bed?” he asked, looking up at me with his ears forward and tail wagging. ”I can be a man if you like. And I”ll try to explain.”

It was weird to see a dog talking, but whatever connection I had to it… to him… To Keilain… It meant that I wasn”t upset by any of the weirdness. Watching his mouth move as he spoke wasn”t any stranger than watching anyone else”s mouth as they talked. If you think too hard about what tongues and lips are doing, it”s always uncomfortable to see.

”Um. Okay, I guess.” I made a face, pursing my lips. ”Are there any… clothes?”

His jaw opened in a canine smile. ”Yes! The Master left them for you. He thought you would like to dress yourself.” Keilain”s attitude changed slightly, his tail lowering and face going serious. ”He might have done it anyway, but I didn”t allow it.”

”Isn”t he your… master?” I asked, edging towards the bed.

The dog snorted, shaking his head in a very human gesture. ”Not anymore.”

He trotted out of the room with a springing gait, leaving me to get onto the bed again. I did, not really sure what else to do, scooting back against the headboard with my knees tucked up to my chest.

Keilain came back before I had a chance to start getting nervous, carrying a bundle of cloth in his jaws. He hopped back up onto the bed, making the whole thing shake, and dropped the cloth in my lap before flopping down next to me in the same half-man, half-dog form, smiling up at me with a dog”s unabashed affection.

I shook out the cloth, discovering a heavily-embroidered robe sized for a man, along with a long strip of undyed cloth that I guessed was what passed for underwear wherever we were.

”No girl”s clothes, huh?” I asked, getting onto my knees and shrugging on the robe.

”The Master is the only one who usually wears clothing,” Keilain said, sounding apologetic, his ears going back and tail giving a single wag in the way of a dog trying not to get scolded. ”The servitors are only constructs, and the rest of us are the hounds. Or his horse.”

He didn”t stop looking at me, sprawled down next to me with the ease of comfort, but I didn”t really want to keep on my bloody underwear, and I wasn”t really sure how far I could push things. A bit awkwardly, I scooted around until I had my back to him and a robe between us, and started trying to puzzle out the cloth strip.

”Oh. Modesty. Yes,” he said in a dazed sort of voice, sounding as if he was talking to himself. ”You”re… human. Humans often like that. I remember. But not… but not in bed?”

Key sounded so unhappy that I reached back and patted him on the side. ”It”s alright, pup,” I said, as if he really was a dog and not a staggeringly attractive man who was part-dog. ”The fact that you”ve had your tongue on my panties notwithstanding, it”s habit not to flash my pussy at strange men.”

”I”m not a stranger,” he said, sounding hopeful. I heard his tail thud against the bed. ”I”m your soulmate.” Before I could react to that, Keilain made a disgruntled sound, then added with a sigh, ”One of your soulmates.”