by Amy Star
In the crowd on the promenade, Justin and Suzanne had managed to grab themselves a spot near the outer rail, which offered the best view of the flowing lights of the parade below them and the glow of the lights on the mountain. This was a sight and a sound that Justin had experienced many times, but now he afforded himself the chance to see it, at least vicariously, through the eyes of Suzanne, who was here for the first time.
He watched the gold of her hair gleam as radiantly as all the lights in the dark, and her face illuminated with a light of its own to match. And he wondered how it would be to bring her back here again for the next nominations. And the next, and the next. Of course it was out of bounds to think such things—or was it? What was there to stop him hiring her for the next time? Or for any time? They were both business people, after all. She had a service to provide and he was a satisfied repeat customer. There was no reason at all not to continue the relationship.
Except that he had now couched it in a term that had other contexts, other meanings: Relationship. A word that Justin had always ducked and avoided, except in business. He appreciated “relationships” in business. He found them uncomplicated, for the most part, and rewarding. It was other “relationships” that had always been entanglements, encumbrances, things that he’d never cared to negotiate—until now. He had never had a “transaction” as satisfying as this—until now.
Suzanne’s hand was in his and Justin gave it a little stroke with his thumb. She looked away from the panorama in the dark and up at him, into the expression on his face that said without words everything that he was thinking and feeling. She gave him a smile and a thumb stroke in return.
And the werewolves howled on into the night.
On a balcony on the slope to the west of the convention center stood a tall, slender woman with her hair pulled back tight and twined into a single thin braid. Everything about her, from her hair to the packing of her lean, hard body into tight clothing, to the hard focus of her eyes and the set of her jaw, suggested energy; humming, crackling energy, coiled up, twitching, waiting to be triggered and released. She focused herself squarely on the convention center’s outer promenade and the dozens of figures standing there. She completely tuned out the howling of the werewolves, the glow and flicker of the lights, the stream of golden brilliance heading for the lakeside. None of that mattered. She saw only that promenade and all the people on it. There was nothing else.
She did not care about the nominations gala or all the fuss and bother surrounding it. She had been here and seen that before and she was sure it was the same thing every time. What interested the woman, what completely claimed and monopolized her mind, was who she knew was over there in that group of people, inhuman not only in their two bodies but in their wealth. The woman had come into some means herself lately, but she commanded only a small fraction of the money that occupied that promenade. The money she had made was nothing, a paltry sum, compared to his fortune. He was rich beyond comprehension.
But soon, all his money would not save him. Not from her.
The woman smiled with just a corner of her mouth. With a thought, she transformed just her eyes. The blue of her eyes turned a deep brown-black. The whites of them turned a golden yellow. The acuity and sharpness of her vision multiplied. In her changed sight, what had been a collection of tiny dots on the structure set into the other slope resolved into a view of individual people, as clear as if she were using the most powerful binoculars. She loved the things she could do now. And she loved knowing how little he would soon love them.
Given time, she was sure, she could pick him out of that crowd over there. Her enhanced vision was sharp enough and she knew his face well enough. More than just his face, she knew every bit of him: every godly-handsome line of his features, every short bristle of his perfectly cut beard, every massively shaped and perfectly formed muscle of his body. She knew the sumptuous spread of hair down his spectacular torso and what lay beneath the dark thicket of hair at his crotch: the cock that was a limb in its own right, which he had plunged into her for so many hours on so many nights when she lay beneath him, worshipping him, adoring him.
If she were to pick him out of that crowd now, she would also find the one that the people she’d hired had told her about and secretly photographed from afar, the new woman that he’d brought with him. The blonde. She could almost have predicted that it would be a blonde. Who was it, she wondered. Another model? An actress? A dancer? To be with him, she would have to be the best of whatever she was. He only wanted the best, after all.
He had once thought she was the best. The woman on the balcony had truly believed it would last, that they were so good for each other, so perfect together, that he would not tire of her. She had thought that the next time he came to this event in Ambrosian City—this event, tonight, she would still be at his side. And in his bed.
But no. Now it was this other one. This blonde.
The woman on the balcony shifted her eyes back to human. She did not want to see him and the blonde after all, not right now. Not knowing what would happen when the evening’s festivities were over and he took her back, no doubt to the Ambrosian Premier. That was where he usually stayed when he came here—except for the one time that he brought her with him. Right now she was in their place, the place to which he’d brought her. The place where he’d banged her upstairs and downstairs when he wasn’t busy with morph business.
Let them have their fun, decided Mariah Porter. Yes, let him go to bed with his blonde. Let him fuck her and enjoy her as Mariah knew he would. That would be his last hurrah. By this time tomorrow she would see Justin Gates again. Justin would see what had become of the lover he no longer wanted. And he would learn there was something in the world more terrifying than a bear.
_______________
Justin had dimmed the lights and turned down the sheets and now sat on the bed, naked and erect, howling inside as if he were a wolf instead of a bear, waiting for her.
Suzanne stepped out of the bathroom clad in a strapped negligee that was just transparent enough to show the perfect curves and contours of her tall, toned body. He sensed that there was nothing under that diaphanous fabric but Suzanne’s soft, smooth, warm skin. Justin’s member throbbed approvingly at his crotch. She smiled at him and at it, and strode alluringly over to join him on the bed.
She curled up beside him and he wasted no time bringing his mouth to hers, wrapping her up in one powerful arm and sending the other hand up under the hem of the flimsy fabric in which she was dressed, seeking and finding her moistened treasure. She accepted and returned the kiss, while her own hand took hold of the incredible instrument of joy that pulsed huge and hot between his legs. He parted the kiss and Suzanne was ready to lean down and take his root into her mouth when Justin said, “You made me feel really special and important tonight.”
Mildly surprised, Suzanne blinked at him. “You should always feel special and important,” she said.
“Tonight was different,” said Justin. “I knew everyone tonight would look at you as my ‘trophy.’ But if I’m really honest…I’m the one who felt like the trophy. I’m the one who felt like the prize.”
Suzanne’s expression melted into something that Justin could not read. She actually pulled away from him at those last words, and a knot of anxiety coiled up in him as she withdrew to the other side of the bed, staring out into the dimness of the suite. What had he said? Could he possibly have hurt her in some way? What could he do to make it right?
He put a hand on her shoulder, stroked it through her hair, and finally put his fingers under her chin and turned her face back to him. Justin’s heart sank to see the tears tracing little rivulets down Suzanne’s face. Whatever it was he’d said, had he hurt her that badly?
“What is it?” he asked, growing sick with worry. “What did I say? Please, tell me.”
Half-whispering, Suzanne answered, “It’s not supposed to be this way.”
“What way?”
“I’m only supposed to be doing a job. I’m…” And at this she hesitated.
“You’re what?”
On the edge of sobbing, she finished: “I’m not supposed to love you.”
And now, Justin’s heart crumbled; cracked and crumbled and fell to pieces with a pain such as he had never felt in all his life. As awful as the pain he feared he had caused her, and perhaps more so, was the pain that now turned his heart to rubble. “Oh my God, Suzanne,” was all he could say.
“I know,” she said, beginning to weep. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Justin; it’s against the job, it’s against the rules, it’s…”
He cut her off by pulling her back across the bed and back into his arms, and claiming her lips in another kiss that felt to Suzanne like the glow of the lights of the torches on the mountain. It was a kiss that rendered all words feeble.
Keeping her wrapped up in his arms, Justin said, “You’re right, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’m not supposed to love you, either.”
She straightened up to look him directly in that handsome face. Too many feelings to name now welled up inside her. “Oh, Justin, no,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s how it is. I’ve actually gone there. I love you, Suzanne.”
Suzanne was fit to cry again. This was a game changer. This was an everything changer. Her entire future was now a question mark, any plan she might ever have made for her life was now meaningless. “What are we supposed to do now?” she wondered.
Justin shook his head. “I never saw myself being in love at all, let alone like this. I don’t even know your real name. You don’t work under your real name, I take it…”
She sighed at the question itself and at how perceptive he was. Before she knew what she was doing, Suzanne Sutton heard herself saying, “Tricia Eaves.”
Her eyes widened at what she had just done. There it was, something that she had never done with any client. Or something else that she had never done with any client. Suzanne had never fallen in love with one, and she had certainly never told one her real name. She had now truly, totally, completely exposed herself to him, making herself more naked to him than if she had slipped out of her negligee to join him in bed instead of letting him do the honors. She felt on the brink of something, on the precipice of something, and it was making her head spin with apprehension. What would come next?
Justin said, “Let’s stick with Suzanne. This is the real you. This is the you that’s free to be whatever you want to be. I never knew you as Tricia, but Tricia probably had limits. Suzanne doesn’t. I want you to want to be mine. I fell in love with Suzanne.” He kissed her tenderly, more tenderly than he had ever kissed her in all the short time they had known each other. “I love to fuck Suzanne.”
In a burst of joy, she returned her lips to his and took his tongue into her mouth, and she gave herself into the pure, total, absolute amazement of this moment. There was absolutely nothing to which Suzanne could compare the way she felt, or the way she sensed that he felt. There was nothing to do now but seal this moment with the deepest, most impassioned kiss into which they could pour their hearts.
“What is this going to mean, Justin?” she asked at the end of a glorious kiss.
Justin felt a little sting in his heart at the memory of other women who had asked him that question, to which he’d given answers that they did not want to hear. He studied her, looking for the words.
“Will I be your ‘kept woman’ now?” she asked.
“Would that be a bad thing?” he asked in return.
For the first time, she actually frowned. “Everyone sees what I do as wrong—legally, morally wrong. But it’s made me independent, Justin; independent in a way most people aren’t. I like my independence. I love you, but…I don’t want to be ‘kept’.”
Reassuringly, Justin brushed her hair with his fingers. “I will support anything you want to do, Suzanne—except staying in this business. You can’t have the business you’re in and this relationship; they don’t go together. Anything else you decide you want to do, I’ll support. Do whatever you want; become a party planner for real, like we were lying about, or anything else you want to do. I’ll support you all the way. Just so long as what you do in bed every night from now on, you do with me. Only me, no one else.”
There was silence in the bed, silence in the dimness of the suite, as Suzanne weighed the words that he’d just told her and Justin weighed the feelings and the honesty with which he’d said them and meant them. In the silence was the question of what would happen next.
Suzanne took his hand and moved it to one of the straps of her negligee. “Take this off me,” she told him.
In as little time as it took to say it, the sleek, see-through garment was tossed to the foot of the bed and Suzanne and Justin rolled back and forth together, kissing, tonguing, fondling. At length she had him on his back, and took as much of his immense length as she could get into her mouth. Justin, who had promised to have her howling, once again felt more like a howling wolf than a bear.
The sex went on for hours, the two of them going down on each other and Justin drilling her lady parts and penetrating to her womb, into which he poured deluges of seed. But this time it was different. This time it was sex such as Suzanne had never known since she was in school, and sex such as Justin had never known in his life.
It was mingled and punctuated with breathless moans of “I love you” back and forth, during and between. For Suzanne it was a return to something pure that she wondered if she would ever have again. For Justin it was a total revelation, an astoundingly wondrous discovery. For Justin especially, entering Suzanne over and over was like entering a new world, a world that belonged to them alone.
As they lay together before dawn after a long night of Justin’s sweet, hard fucking, Suzanne ran her fingers along the line of his jaw, through the short, short hairs of his immaculate beard. Their eyes were still locked together as their bodies had been. Their feelings were still entwined the way they had entwined their limbs. It felt as though nothing could ever untangle them, and they welcomed it.
“When did you know?” Suzanne asked softly.
“Hmm…?”
“When did you know how you felt about me?”
He grinned a little, playing with her nipple and making her grin back. “Oh. When did I know? Tell you the truth, it started sneaking up on me, kind of like a hunter in the forest. Which is not a metaphor that a man who’s a bear uses lightly, I might add.”
She chuckled a little at that.
“It started over dinner that first night,” he went on. “I started to see you weren’t just someone I’d hired. You weren’t just a walking sex toy. You had depth—substance. I saw right then that you’re not just what you do. You’re more. Just…more.”
Suzanne now brushed her knuckles lovingly over his beard. He had made her feel not only loved, but understood, which was just as pleasing.
“So when did you know?” Justin asked.
“I think it was that first morning,” she said, “when you came up out of the pool in your other body and morphed back to human in front of me. There was just something so sweet about you. You were like…”
He cut her off. “Please don’t compare me to a Teddy bear. I am not any fucking Teddy bear.” And he smiled at her as much as he scolded her.
They broke into a laugh, and Suzanne squealed a bit at his squeezing her nipple.
“That’s not what I meant,” she giggled like a teenager. “I only meant you were like some wild thing that was making itself tame just for me. That’s when it started.”
“I don’t feel tame when I’m in you,” Justin said. “I feel like the horniest fucking thing that ever lived. I feel that way all the time anyway, but…with you I feel…connected. Connected like I’ve never felt with anyone else. Fucking you feels like our bodies were made for each other, like I belong in you. I’m asking something of you that I’ve never asked anyone else in my life. Love me, Suzanne—
my body, my dick, all of me. Just love me.”
Suzanne, with a feeling in her heart like one of the roses in his garden unfolding into a bloom, slid closer and curled up against him. “Yes,” she simply said with a sigh. “Yes, I will love you. I will love you. I do love you. Yes.”
Justin held her, feeling something in his arms that was more precious than all his billions and all his other holdings. His other holdings were nothing compared to what lay curled up in his arms right then. A deep and blissful sleep took them as they had taken each other.
CHAPTER NINE
Technically, Suzanne’s shopping spree was not a violation of the rules of Telegirl that Ginny had laid out so plainly. Justin had given her spending money—thousands—as a bonus; what she did with it was not considered a gift from him. Ginny was pragmatic enough to allow for things like that.