Wolf Town

by Bridget Essex

  Morgan stood in front of everyone, explaining the fact that the safeguards had been eliminated, and what that would mean for the town. That we’d have to be careful if we were “different” from most humans. That, perhaps, if we were werewolves, we shouldn’t transform (or hunt) outside of city limits. That we should be respectful of the neighboring towns, but that, at the end of the day, we shouldn’t be afraid.

  And the townsfolk listened to her with rapt attention. And though there were a few naysayers, for the most part, everyone applauded the fact that they were no longer dependent on a safeguard that had been built several centuries ago.

  And then we spent a good hour discussing how to transport Ellie’s lake monster children to the ocean. It was a full town hall agenda. And a practically normal subject for Wolf Town.

  It was a little odd having a conversation with Allen afterward. I knew it was going to be awkward for a while. He had, after all, intended on me being a sacrifice. That was bound to ruin any sort of beginning relationship. But I only had to see him at holiday dinners, probably, and that was all right. We’d avoid each other and talk about the weather. It’d be like a normal family holiday dinner.

  After the town hall meeting, Morgan and I went out into the chill air of Wolf Town. The sun was setting along the edge of the horizon, the leaves were roaming across the main street of the town, and the air smelled deliciously of cider and pumpkin. We walked, arm in arm, past the Ninth Order and Victor locking up for the night. He gave us a toothy grin and a nod, and slipped the key into the lock. We walked past the Witch Way Café where my aunt, Bette, freshly arrived back from her vacation, was locking up, too. She flashed me a grin and a thumbs up sign. And a pretty bawdy wink. I was growing to really like her—she was just as crazy and wonderful as the rest of my family, and I was still helping her out at the café part time.

  We walked all the way to the end of the main street of Wolf Town, to the final building on the left, a brick building that had stood for over two hundred years.

  And, on the top floor, was Morgan’s home, her condo.

  Our condo.

  “You realize that we’re making all of those terrible lesbian Uhaul jokes a reality, right?” I asked her as I laughed when she picked me up, ready and willing to carry me across the threshold.

  “You didn’t use a Uhaul,” she growled reasonably, glancing down at me with a seductive little smile. “So we’re safe.”

  “Right,” I whispered, my heart pounding inside of me as she set me down just inside the door.

  “These are strange days for Wolf Town,” said Morgan then seriously, her brows furrowed. “I know it’s all screwed up, what my father did. I’m sorry, again, Amy—”

  “Sh,” I told her, pressing my finger to her mouth. “I don’t care what your father did,” I said, and then shook my head at her beginning protest. “I really don’t. He was trying to do the best he could for the town, and anyway, he didn’t succeed in giving me over to the fairies, now did he?”

  “No,” she said, her voice low. “But he almost did. I almost lost you…” She trailed off, wrapping her fingers around my hips, holding me close to her.

  “But you didn’t,” I said, placing my arms around her neck and holding her gaze. “I’m right here. I’m staying,” I whispered, standing up on my tiptoes, “right…here…”

  “I love you, baby,” she said, her mouth soft and warm and lingering as we kissed, as my wolf ate me up, just like they warn in all the fairy tales. I kissed her back just as deeply, though, holding her closer, tighter, stronger.

  She was my wolf now, and forever.

  “Come on,” said Morgan, one sexy brow up as she kicked the door shut gracefully behind her. She chuckled at me, a low and throaty laugh, as she kissed me again. “Let’s make this a happy Halloween,” she whispered.

  And we did.

  The End

  If you enjoyed Wolf Town, you’ll love Bridget’s Sullivan Vampires.

  The following is an excerpt from “Eternal Hotel,” the first novella in the Sullivan Vampires series, a beautiful, romantic epic that follows the clan of Sullivan vampires and the women who love them. Advance praise has hailed this hallmark series as “Twilight for women who love women” and “a lesbian romance that takes vampires seriously! Two thumbs up!”

  …So this was the staircase from last night, next to the front desk. The Widowmaker. It must be. I’d never seen a steeper set of stairs. From up above, they looked simply like the rungs of a ladder in a barn—so steep and so tall and almost impossible to even think of taking.

  It’s not that I don’t like heights—I’m pretty okay with them. But these stairs were something else. I wasn’t taking these steps—I’d have to circle back somehow and find the other spiral staircase down to the first floor

  As I turned, I caught the first floor out of the corner of my eye. Because of the cathedral ceilings of that first floor, it seemed much farther away then I’d thought it was.

  It was then that something strange happened.

  The ground seemed to spin under me for a moment, bucking and heaving like I was trying to walk on waves of carpeting, not good firm floor. Or did it really? Was it just a trick of the eye? Either way, I took a step backward as a shadow fell in front of me, but there was no floor beneath that foot stepping backward, then, and I was tumbling backwards, shock cold enough to burn me flooding through my body as, impossibly, I began to fall down the stairs.

  A hand caught my arm. I hung suspended over the abyss of the air, my back to the emptiness, and in one smooth motion, I was pulled back.

  Saved.

  The hand was cold, and the body I brushed against as I was hauled out of the air felt as if the person had stepped out of a prolonged trip through a walk-in freezer. I looked up at the face of the woman who had saved me, and when I breathed out, I will never forget it: my breath hung suspended in the air between us like a ghost.

  She was taller than me by about a head, and I had to lean back to gaze into her eyes. They were violently blue, a blue that opened me up like a key and lock as she looked down at me, her eyes sharp and dark as her jaw worked, her full lips in a downward curve that my own eyes couldn’t help but follow. She wore a ponytail, the cascades of her silken white-blonde hair gathered tightly at the back of her head and flowing over her right shoulder like frozen water falling. She wore a man’s suit, I realized, complete with a navy blue tie smartly pulled snug against her creamy neck. She looked pale and felt so cold as her strong hand gripped my wrist, but it was gentle, too. As if she knew her own strength.

  I saw all of this in an instant, my eyes following the lines and curves of her like I’d trace my gaze over an extremely fine painting. And, like an extremely fine painting, she began to make my heart beat faster. That was odd. I was never much attracted to random women, even before I dated Anna, even before Anna…well.

  But this wasn’t just my heart beating faster, my blood moving quicker through me. This was something else. A weightlessness, like being suspended in the air over the staircase again, the coolness of her palm against my skin a gravity that I seemed to suddenly spin around. When she gazed down into my eyes, she held me there as firmly as if her hands were snug against the small of my back, pressing me to her cool, lean body that wore the suit with such dignity and grace that I couldn’t imagine her in anything else.

  I was spellbound.

  She said not a word, but her fingers left my wrist, grazing a little of the skin of my bare forearm for a heartbeat before her hand fell to her side. I shivered, holding my hand to my heart, then, as if I’d been bitten. We stood like that for a heartbeat, two, the woman’s eyes never leaving mine as her chin lifted, as her jaw worked again, her full lips parting…

  “Are you all right?” I shivered again. Her voice was dark, deep and throaty, as cool as her skin, as gentle as the touch of her fingertips along my arm. But as I gazed up at her, as I tried to calm my breathing, my heart, we blinked, she and I, together.

  I k
new, then.

  I’d heard that voice before.

  I’d seen this face before.

  “Have we…met?” I stammered, eyes narrowed as I gazed up at her in wonder. We couldn’t have. She shook her head and put it to the side as she looked down at me, as if I was a particularly difficult puzzle that needed solving. I would have remembered her, the curve of her jaw and lips, the dazzling blue of her eyes. I could never have forgotten her if I’d only seen her once. It would have been impossible.

  I took a gulp of air and took a step back again, unthinking, and her hand was there, then, at my wrist again as she smoothly pulled me forward, toward her.

  “The stairs,” she said softly, apologetically. I’d taken a step closer to her this time, and there was hardly any space between us, even as I realized that my hand was at her waist, steadying myself against her. I took a step to the side, quickly, then, my cheeks burning.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed, swallowing. “And…thank you…” Her head was still to the side, but this time, her lips twitched as if she was trying to repress a smile.

  “I’ve been meaning to remodel these steps. Not everyone knows how steep they truly are,” she said, and her lips did turn up into a smile, then, making my heart beat a little faster. I took a great gulp of air as she held out her cool fingers to me, palm up.

  “I am Kane Sullivan,” she said easily, her tongue smoothing over the syllables as the smile vanished from her face. “You must be Rose Clyde,” she said gently, the thrill of her voice, the deepness of it, the darkness of it, saying my name, the way her lips formed the words…I nodded my head up and down like a puppet, and I placed my hand in hers. Her fingers were so cold, as she shook my hand like a delicate thing, letting her palm slide regretfully over mine as she dropped my hand with a fluid grace I had to watch but still couldn’t fully understand.

  I was acting like an idiot. I’d seen beautiful women before. But Kane wasn’t beautiful. Not in that sense. She was…compelling. Her face, her gaze, her eyes, an impossibility of attraction. I felt, as I watched her, that buildings, trees, people would turn as she walked past them, unseeing things still, somehow, gazing at her.

  I knew her, then.

  The painting. The woman in the painting from last night, with the big, black cat, lounging and regal and triumphant and unspeakably bewitching. The naked woman, I realized, as my face began to redden, warming beneath her cool, silent gaze. She was the woman from the painting. But as I realized that, as we silently watched one another, I realized, too, that that would have been impossible. It had been a while since college, it was true, but I could still tell when a painting was a few hundred years old.

  The woman in the painting could not possibly have been Kane Sullivan. And yet, it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” I spluttered, realizing—again—how much of an idiot I must look to this incredibly attractive creature. Her lips twitched upward again, and her mouth stretched into a true smile this time, the warmth of it making the air around her seem less frozen.

  “You’re fine. It’s not everyday that someone completely uproots their life and charts a course for places unknown,” she said, turning on her heel and inclining her heard toward me. As she turned, I caught the scent of her. Jasmine, vanilla…spice. An intoxicating, cool scent that was warm at the same time. Unmistakable and deeply remarkable. Just like her. I stared up at her with wide eyes as she gestured gracefully with her arm for us to walk together, like she was a gentleman from the past century. True, she was wearing a sharp man’s suit (that I was trying desperately not to stare at or trace the curves of it with my eyes—and failing), but there was something incredibly old fashioned about her. I kept thinking about that at that first meeting. Like she was from a different era, not the one of smart phones and the Internet and fast food french fries. No. The kind of era that had horse-drawn carriages, corsets and bustles and houses that contained parlors. We began to walk down the corridor together, in the opposite direction I had come, me sneaking surreptitious glances at her, her staring straight ahead.

  The spell of the moment was broken, but a new spell was beginning to create itself, weaving around the two of us as we walked along the corridor. As she spoke, I stared half up at her, half down the hall stretching out in front of us. All of my actual attention, though, was on this woman.

  Every bit of it. She was just like that. So…compelling. She was a gravity that pulled me in, hook, line and sinker. I didn’t know then how much of a gravity she had yet to become to me.

  You can get Eternal Hotel, the first in the Sullivan Vampires series, available now!

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  Acknowledgements

  I wrote Wolf Town while Natalie and I planned our wedding together. I remember writing the last sentence about two days before our actual wedding day. Writing this novel kept me sane during the whirlwind and fast-paced joy that planning our wedding brought us. Revisiting the novel now, it has brought me much of that same joy in the form of memories. So these acknowledgements would be incomplete without thinking of every single family member and dear friend who came to our wedding, supporting us with their love. Getting married when you’re a lesbian is sometimes a difficult endeavor, and the love shown to us at our wedding erased some of the hardships we underwent in order to have our perfect day free of homophobia. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to our beloved guests and bridesmaids, sweet ringbearer and flower girls, and to our officiant, who performed his first legal gay marriage with us in our state! It was a life-changing day, one I cherish.

  P.J. Bryce is incredibly supportive of my work and everything I try to do in this world. I’m so grateful that my best friend is also a writer, and I’m so grateful for the thousands of hours of conversation we’ve had together outlining the finer points of werewolf pack hierarchy and laughing together. I’m blessed to know you, and extra blessed that you always tell me what you love and don’t love about a story I’m cooking up. I wouldn’t be half the writer I am without you, so thank you for everything.

  Marian and Ruby are two of the most wonderful women I’ve ever met. Natalie and I both are so incredibly grateful for your friendship and support in all of our publishing and writing endeavors, and all of our crazy life adventures. We love you both fiercely.

  This book is especially dedicated to Terri, who is really awesome beyond words. Who else would tell me how to use a Stanley knife and cut drywall? I’m so lucky I met you—you’re a wonderful friend, and I’m grateful for you.

  I am eternally grateful to every single person who buys my books, who reviews them or cheers me on as I’m writing them. My fans and friends are some of the best in the universe—I’m so grateful for you. You make all of this worthwhile. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. : )

  And to the love of my life. Natalie, I don’t know what I did to deserve you. You are my soul mate and the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you, baby. Thank you for sharing this wild adventure with me. Life is beautiful with you beside me.

  About Author Bridget Essex

  Bridget Essex has been writing about her beloved vampires for almost two decades. She has a vast collection of knitting needles and teacups, and likes to listen to classical music when she writes. Her first date with her wife was strolling in a garden, so it’s safe to say she’s a bit old fashioned.

  Bridget has a black cat she loves very much, and a brown dog who actually convinces her to go outside. When she’s actually outside, she begins to realize that writing is not all there is to life. Just most of it. She loves hiking with Natalie, her wife, and going on adventures together. But, mostly, a perfect day is spent writing side by side.

  You can find out more about her work at http://BridgetEssex.wordpress.com She’d love to connect with you on Facebook! Friend her here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008329511329&ref=tn_tnmn

  Learn more about Rose and Star Press, publishers of lesb
ian romance and fiction of distinction, at http:///www.LesbianRomance.org