by Amira Rain
Werewolf males were like that; underwear was just another layer over the nakedness they most enjoyed. Off came the socks. And there they stood, Nash and Pearce Maguire, spectacularly, gloriously naked, uncircumcised man parts dangling long and thick and free. Just as Megan remembered of lycanthropes from her college days, they had absolutely no shame about their bodies.
And they had absolutely no reason at all to be ashamed. Megan flashed back for a moment on Tate’s male friends whom she had met. The white ones and the brown ones, the gay ones and the straight ones, they all had one common denominator. Every one of them was a thing of shocking, heart-stopping gorgeousness. The Maguire brothers, showing themselves naked on their webcams, were true to their breed.
“Ask your friend,” said Pearce.
Gathering her breath, Megan replied, “I will.”
And she did. She asked Amy and managed to talk her into it—at least until Chris, the man from Amy’s own past, reappeared and made a surprise re-entry into her life. (And not incidentally into Amy.)
And that was how Megan now found herself on the train through the countryside to Rendall Glen, wishing it were a bullet train to get her there faster.
*
The town of Rendall Glen was too small to have an actual train station. At one edge of town there was a ticket stand and a platform, and it was to the platform that the train brought Megan. Quickly she collected her one big bag from the overhead compartment and her purse—containing her refilled prescription of birth control pills that she had not needed and stopped using after the divorce—from the empty seat beside her, and climbed off the train and onto the platform.
And there they were, on the concrete walk under the outside shelter. They smiled their twin smiles and waved at her, and she smiled back, excited at the end of her journey. Megan had heard many times that the journey mattered more than the destination. Looking now at her twin destinations, seeing them for the first time as something more than images on a screen, Megan called “bull” on the whole idea.
Clad in denim and flannel and work boots, they looked like something out of a catalogue. They could easily have been models and would undoubtedly have cleaned up in that profession. They were exactly her type.
Megan and the twins walked quickly up to each other. She put down her bag to accept their welcoming hugs. Fully clothed, they felt wonderful enough. Megan couldn’t wait to know how those embraces would feel when the clothes came off.
Nash took Megan’s bag, and there were the usual formalities of asking how her trip had been as they led her away from the platform to their SUV in the parking lot. “I hope you’re hungry,” said Pearce.
“I had a little something in the dining car on the way up,” replied Megan. Yes, I’m very hungry—not just for food. And I’m looking forward to having a big something at your place. Two big somethings.
“Well, we’ve got a great dinner planned for you at the house,” Nash told her.
“For starters,” Pearce added, the corner of his mouth turning up into a grin.
“That sounds great,” said Megan.
Yes, “starters” it would be. And then, she knew, the first of many big finishes.
CHAPTER THREE
On the drive through Rendall Glen, Megan harked back to what Tate told her that one fateful night: Most of us live outside of the cities. There are little towns tucked away, where it’s either mostly us or there’s enough of us that it’s like safety in numbers. You and your folks have probably driven by places where we lived and not even knew it.
Looking out the window of the Maguire brothers’ SUV at the panorama of the town and the perfectly ordinary looking people passing by, Megan wondered which ones were the humans and which ones were the werewolves. No one looked as if he or she cared a bit. Where people met outside of a store or a cafe, they greeted and talked as though they were all the same. Anyone here could be a werewolf: the shopkeeper, the postman, the police officer, the fireman, the woman making her way down the street with her baby in a stroller.
Everyone just seemed to mind his or her own business here, which no doubt was to the good of everyone. They could be completely anonymous about their shape-changing status, or only a select few could know.
It was a little picture-postcard of a town with a Main Street, stores and shops, neatly kept little residential neighborhoods, schools and churches, a park, a pond, a bike and jogging path along one side. Little buses built and painted to resemble trolleys took people here and there. Unless one happened to see someone morph his or her body or some part of it (something they likely would not do in the open), one would never know that there was anything “different” about this place.
Pearce was at the wheel and the brothers let Megan ride shotgun while Nash rode in the back. Along their way through the town, the brothers pointed out landmarks and told little anecdotes about the place where they had spent their whole lives. It was all charming enough, of course. But like all such little towns, Rendall Glen had another face, or other faces, that showed only behind closed doors and shutters and drawn curtains.
There were, Megan was sure, any number of things that went on here that the brothers did not know about or that they did not talk about. Likely many of them were things that no one talked about—unless it was really necessary. And that was true of any town, whether lycanthropes lived there or not. Any town was one place in the eyes of the world and another place in the eyes of the people who lived there. And that was fine with Megan. All that concerned her was the things that would happen in the place where Nash and Pearce were taking her.
Just on the outskirts of town, near enough to the main body of Rendall Glen that one trolley went there, but far enough away to be fairly secluded, was a place where the surrounding forests thickened and the hills rose up into mountainsides.
Off the main road, a private road peeled away and up onto the side of a hill, and nestled at the top of the hill was a large and handsome house of glass and stained logs. This was the home where generations of the Maguire family—or the Maguire pack—had lived for as long as anyone in town could remember, which Nash and Pearce had inherited from their parents.
Megan could just make it out as they came up the road. When they reached the top of the hill and the road gave out into a wide circle of pavement, the house greeted them in full view. A driveway extended from the paved circle on one side, leading to a garage. On the other side loomed a large barn, which the brothers had told Megan was their workshop. Pearce brought the SUV to a stop in front of the house, not bothering to head for the driveway, and the three of them climbed out, Nash toting Megan’s bag again.
“Welcome to our house,” said Pearce cordially.
“Welcome, Megan,” said Nash.
“Thanks, guys,” said Megan. “It looks wonderful.”
Megan looked the house up and down. It did look wonderful. And she had no doubt the things that would soon happen here would be even more so.
The first thing that Megan noticed about the interior of the house was the way the living room had been set up. There was a luxurious leather sofa facing a large stone fireplace. Quilts were draped over the back of the sofa, and more quilts and pillows were set up in front of the hearth. Candles stood at the ready on the coffee table between the sofa and fireplace, and on the mantle.
“That’s for later, after dinner,” Nash told Megan with a wink.
Megan flashed forward mentally to “later” and quietly approved. The structure of the house was not where the only “logs” were in this place. She would soon experience what kind of “lumber” Nash and Pearce had to offer her.
The next thing she noticed were all the pictures on the walls in the living room: photographs of people and wolves who were of course one and the same. The ones that amused her the most were right over the large stone fireplace set into the log wall on one side. At the left was a black and white photo of a group of people standing on grass and stones on a hillside. At the left was the same scene, with a grou
p of wolves in the same positions. Megan knew at once that she was looking at a portrait of one generation of the Maguire pack both as humans and as wolves. She was utterly charmed.
“A lot of the older relatives we grew up with—grandfolks, aunts, uncles—are in that shot,” Nash pointed out to her. “We always were quite a pack.”
“Are you in this one?” Megan asked.
Pearce gestured to a bookcase on one side of the room. “Nash and I are over here.”
Megan looked, and went to a set of photos standing on one of the bookshelves. There was a picture of twin little boys sitting together on what she recognized as the front steps of this very house. Next to it was a picture of an identical pair of wolf pups sitting beside a pile of fireplace logs, their heads tilted curiously at the camera.
Grinning broadly, Megan said, “Oh, you were adorable!”
“Yeah, they didn’t always think we were adorable,” said Nash. “They managed to catch us at a couple of ‘adorable’ moments.”
“You must have been a couple of handfuls,” she said, admiring the pictures.
“We still are,” Pearce said.
Megan looked over her shoulder at them, the grown-up versions of the two little boys and the two little pups in the pictures. The expressions on the twin faces were not those of boys unschooled in what to do with a pretty girl—or woman. They were the handsome and bedroom-ready looks of what those little boys had become. They gave her a delicious little tingle.
“There are more pictures upstairs,” said Nash. “Pictures we like to keep in the bedrooms.”
When Megan arched her eyebrows in reaction, Pearce quickly added, “Not pictures like that. Just pictures it’s better for just us to see. Shots of members of the pack as half-wolves on two legs, shots of us sitting around and playing that way. We get along with the humans in town well enough; it’s just there are boundaries, things for our eyes only. It’s actually better for the humans not to see that.”
“Oh, I understand,” Megan said.
“A lot of history went on in this house,” Nash continued. “The older folks loved to tell stories, all kinds of stories. We spent a lot of hours around the fire,” he cocked his head at the fireplace, “listening to them.”
“What kind of stories?” Megan asked.
“Oh, the kind that get passed down from one generation to the next, until no one knows where they started or where they came from…”
“Or if they’re even true,” Pearce added.
“Yeah. Some of them, you’d swear they came out of old movies, things about our kind—and other things that are supposed to be out there roaming loose in the world.”
“And those are the ones that may or may not be for real,” Megan guessed.
“Trust us,” said Pearce, “neither one of us has ever met any creature that a human would think was ‘weird’ or ‘creepy’ or a ‘monster.’ Except other werewolves, of course. Even we have our crazy superstitions.”
“Just goes to show, we’re all only human,” said Nash, smiling playfully.
Upstairs the house had three main bedrooms and one guest bedroom. The largest of these was the very spacious master suite, which had its own fireplace, a larger than king-size bed, and its own full bath. The twins took Megan and her bag there. Setting down Megan’s bag on one side of the master suite, Nash said, “Pearce and I sleep in our own separate bedrooms—except when we’re entertaining someone; then we use this room.”
“We’ll be using this bedroom while you’re here,” added Pearce with a smile, the meaning of which wrapped silently around the three of them.
And I’ll be very, very entertained, Megan added in her thoughts.
She set down her purse on the bed—appropriately, as it contained her prescription—and noted the photos on the walls around her. Some of them were as the brothers said they were, pictures of werewolves on two legs, sitting and standing about, sometimes playing together. One photo that caught her eye on the fireplace mantle was that of two young lycanthropes sitting on a large tree stump at dusk, heads lifted and mouths opening, howling exuberantly.
“That’s Pearce and me,” said Nash. “It was one of Mom and Dad’s favorite shots.”
“It’s sweet,” Megan said.
“Over here is one you’ll like,” said Pearce.
On the wall by the doorway into the master bath was a picture of two strikingly handsome young boys—twins—striding naked out of a stream, uncaring about their nakedness before the camera. Megan went to join Pearce and immediately recognized them.
“How old were you then?” Megan asked, admiring the picture.
“Probably twenty-two, twenty-three,” Pearce replied.
“You were gorgeous,” said Megan.
“Still are,” Pearce said.
“And modest too,” called Nash from beside the bed.
Megan and Pearce eyed Nash, Megan with amusement, Pearce with mock annoyance.
“Let’s just show her the rest of the place, you asshat,” said Pearce.
She took one last look at the photo. Captured on film, swinging between their legs, were the two massive logs that would soon light her own private fire. Letting go of the image for the reality, for the moment, she joined the twins on their way out of the room.
On the way back down to the living room, the conversation shifted. “All the furniture you see in the house, either Nash and I made ourselves, or our parents or their parents, or even their parents. This house has been in our pack since the time of our great grandparents,” Pearce brought up. “We’ve had to renovate it a few times, but this is where our pack has lived, going back that long. We have sisters and female cousins living elsewhere, with their mates and their own packs. Our father left the house and family business to Nash and me.”
Megan looked around again at the living room, appreciating how much living had truly gone on there (and how much was going to go on in front of the fireplace before long) as Nash continued, “We used to sell our furniture here in town and in local stores all over the state. We still have a lot of the old catalogs in the closets, and some in the bookcase. When the business really took off we used the catalog to sell all over the country. Now it all goes through the Internet, of course.”
“I know,” said Megan. “I’ve been to your website.”
“Yeah,” said Nash. “We keep most of the inventory in a warehouse; we can’t store it here. And we have apprentices and assistant builders to keep up with demand; they work with us over in the woodworking shop. Our stuff is pretty popular—though it might not be if some humans knew who we are.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Megan. “Some of us would probably be more excited to buy furniture if they knew lycanthropes had built it.”
“That’s what I keep telling him!” Pearce cut in. “It’d be perfect marketing. Not every human is scared or a hater. Sales wouldn’t fall off; hell, they’d probably jump! Since there are more of you than there are of us, a lot of you have our stuff in their homes already and know how good it is. Werewolf chairs! Werewolf tables! Werewolf benches and dressers!” And with a wink to Megan: “Werewolf beds!”
Megan laughed softly at Pearce taking the opportunity to slip in a little flirtation. He hardly needed to flirt. They all knew where this was going.
“I keep telling him,” said Pearce, cocking his head at Nash, “it’s time to evolve the business another step. See, I want to build a factory, expand the operation, move closer to the city, take on investors.”
“No,” said Nash, flatly. “We’re doing fine the way we are. It’s simple. It’s uncomplicated. And I hate the idea of stockholders wanting to tell us what to do. The way we work now, we build what we like, what we want to build, when we want to build it, and no one tells us what we ought to be doing or how we ought to be doing it. Or what kind of materials to use or where to cut corners or slack off on quality workmanship—which we don’t, by the way, and we wouldn’t. I can’t stand the idea of having people who wouldn
’t know quality workmanship if it ran up to them and bit them in the ass, breathing down our necks about their damn dividends.”
“Hear that?” said Pearce. “And that’s why we’re not growing enough. That right there. And Dad’s will stipulated that any change in the business, or any sale of it, can only be done with my consent and his,” he indicated Nash, who stood with his arms folded defensively. “We both have to agree to it, and this one is too stubborn to change, even if it means a fortune for both of us. He’s letting money get away like a rabbit down a hole.”
“We’ve already made a fortune; we’re not hurting for money,” Nash argued.
“We could make a bigger fortune,” Pearce argued back.