by Tara Lain
“I’m sorry.” Snuffle, sob. “I’m so sorry. Some asshole’s been trying to convince me that you and your family are bad, and I know he’s full of total crap, but I didn’t defend you. I just listened, and that’s such a crappy thing for a best friend to do. I feel like such a disgusting traitor, and I didn’t know how to tell you—”
“Wait. You’re telling me that you haven’t talked to me in days because you feel bad for being a crappy friend?”
“Um-hum.” She sniffed.
“Uh, Carla, because you didn’t tell some idiot I don’t know about where to get off, you’ve been treating me like I murdered your puppy.”
“I d-don’t have a puppy. I have a cat. You know that.” She wiped her eyes as he held her at arm’s length.
“So you’re not mad at me? I didn’t screw up and blow our friendship?”
“No, of course not.” She smacked his shoulder. “You’d never do something like that.”
He half wanted to kill her, but instead, he went with another option—he hugged her hard again.
She hugged back but giggled. “Hey, I never think of you as huggy.”
Right. Because if he hugged too hard, he could kill her. “I’m just relieved, fam. I’ve been thinking… well, a lot of crap.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She finally stepped back and let him walk into the grand foyer of the great house. “Come on.” She led the way to the staircase and up to where he knew her rooms were. As they got to the second floor, she pointed. “Dash is staying down the hall in the blue guest room. I told him I’d text him when you got here.”
“Cool.” Though the thought of Dash didn’t make him feel cool at all. “Can we talk for a second before you message him?”
“Sure.” She glanced at her feet again.
Jazz held up his hands. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me anything about what somebody is saying about me and my family. It’s none of my business.” Still, he was dying to know. “I just need your advice.”
Her head snapped up. “You do?” She sounded excited. “Sit.” She pointed at the couch on one wall of the sitting room that attached to her bedroom. They’d spent many an hour on that couch eating hamburgers and watching werewolf movies—her favorite. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
He sat.
She strode over to her small refrigerator and popped open two vanilla colas, nice and frosty. She carried them back, handed one to Jazz, sprawled in the big chair next to the couch, and took a drink. “Ah. Okay, shoot.” She gazed at him, obviously ready to help him through his crisis.
He sipped his cola to keep from laughing. “Some distant relatives of my family are trying to fix me up with their cousin.”
She cocked her head. She definitely expected something much more earth-shattering than that. “Isn’t that good? I mean, you’ve told me how a lot of your relatives are real homophobes. Them trying to fix you up seems pretty inclusive.”
“Yeah well, I don’t think they’re flying any rainbow flags. They’ve got a family business, and their son doesn’t want it, so I think they’re trying to find someone else to run it.”
She took a drink and burped. “That sounds like a lot of confidence. You should be flattered.”
This was a lot harder to explain without letting any wolves out of bags. “But I feel like they’re manipulating me and trying to run my life.”
She nodded once, emphatically. “Okay, I get it. So do you like the guy?”
“I don’t know, I—”
“What guy?”
Jazz’s head snapped up at Dash’s voice. Dash was standing in the hall outside Carla’s door—the door she’d left ajar.
Carla gave Jazz a quick glance, then bounced up. “Hi, Dash. Come on in. I was just about to text you. Jazz’s relatives are trying to fix him up. Some kind of arranged marriage thing. We were just bitching about butt-in families. What about you? Where are your parents?”
Dash gave Jazz one of those slightly too-long glances of his, then looked back at Carla. She waved at the empty chair beside hers, and he sat, which put him close enough that Jazz could smell his ginger and magnolia scent. Jazz changed buttcheeks on the chair.
“Uh, my parents are in Europe,” Dash said. “I haven’t seen them for a long time. I was kind of, uh, taken in as a foster by Lysandra when I was thirteen, and I’ve been with her ever since.”
“Foster?” Carla looked way interested.
“Yes.” Jazz noticed he swallowed very hard. “I’m interested in issues of world peace and equality, so I guess you could say I’m an apprentice of sorts. I function as an assistant to Lys and get to learn by experience.” His gaze drifted again to Jazz and then back to Carla.
Carla leaned her chin on her hand as she stretched toward Dash. “But she’s not really a relative, right?”
“Right. Just a close family friend who’s kind of like an aunt.” He looked really uncomfortable.
“How come you don’t see your parents? Are you estranged?”
Dash swallowed hard but he answered smoothly. “Not really. They’re just very traditional, and I’m very busy.”
She opened her lips to ask another question, so Jazz leaped in to rescue the poor guy. “So what are we going to do today?”
Carla had a bit of a squirrel response quotient. She instantly turned to Jazz. “Well, you suggested movies and—”
Jazz laughed. “And there’s a new werewolf movie at the Cineplex.”
“Yes!” She laughed.
Dash looked pretty startled.
“We should explain that the only thing Carla likes more than a werewolf is two werewolves,” Jazz said. “Are you up for a really stupid movie?”
Carla crossed her arms. “Oh come on, it got a few good reviews.”
“Right. From people they paid a lot of money.”
Dash finally joined in the laughter. “Hey, I’m in your hands. Maybe tall dark and furry will do it for me too.”
Jazz hoped they didn’t hear his intake of breath.
An hour later, they’d passed on Carla’s chauffeur and limo in favor of taking Jazz’s Prius. While Dash had sat in the back on the way to the theater, he’d managed to end up between Jazz and Carla once they got to their seats with their popcorn and sodas. Not quite sure how that happened.
Carla slipped her giant vanilla cola into the cup holder and balanced her extra gigantic popcorn on her seat. “Going to the restroom.” She held up a finger. “Don’t eat my popcorn!” With that she hurried off, and Jazz laughed.
“Seems like you two have made up,” Dash said in his warm voice.
Jazz turned to Dash, braced for the impact of looking at that face, and nodded. “Yeah. Apparently she’s been acting weird because she felt like she should have told off some guy who was spreading crap about my family and she didn’t. So, she was feeling guilty about it.”
Dash smiled and shook his head, the near-black silk of his longish hair picking up the overhead lights and reflecting small bonfires of red flame. “Girls can be hard to figure out.”
“Tell me about it.” Jazz smirked. “I guess you’d know. I mean you spend all your time with a girl. A woman, I mean.”
A tiny crease appeared between the sharp slash of Dash’s brows. Then he smiled. “Yes, and it’s great, but….” He shrugged with European grace.
“Hard to figure out?”
“Precisely.”
They both smiled and then fell silent. Jazz tried not to stare into Dash’s eyes. Something about cobras and charmers.
Dash cleared his throat. “So, werewolf movies, huh?”
Jazz chuckled. “Yeah, sorry about that. But Carla loves werewolves—”
“And you love Carla.”
Jazz looked up to check for innuendo, but there was none. He nodded. “Right. BFFs and all that.”
“Speaking of the devil….” Dash nodded toward the aisle, and Jazz looked up to see Carla scooting back in. He made as if to reach across Dash for her popcorn, and she gave a mock shriek. Man, was
it ever great to be back on good terms with Carla.
The movie started, and as he’d guessed, it was crappy. But Carla was into it. She bounced in her seat and munched handfuls of popcorn. Neither Jazz nor Dash had gotten any, although Jazz had opted for the vanilla cola he and Carla both loved. Jazz kind of wished he’d gotten popcorn, since maybe it would have helped distract him from the warmth of Dash’s long, firm thigh just inches from Jazz’s leg. The heat kept spreading like a lava flow up to parts that didn’t need any more warming, and Jazz kept shifting from buttcheek to buttcheek.
Carla leaned over. “I got way too much popcorn. You guys want some?”
Dash stared skeptically at the huge bag Carla passed, but Jazz reached over, grabbed it, and clasped it like a life preserver, then held it out to Dash.
As two werewolves roared and attacked each other on the screen, Dash glanced at the offer, then slid a hand into the half-empty bag, dug around, and guided a handful of white kernels toward his mouth. Jazz dragged his eyes away from those lips that he could easily imagine devouring something other than popcorn. He dug his own hand into the bag, grabbed a handful, and shoved it into his mouth, spilling several puffs down his front.
Dash murmured, “Um, good.”
Jazz agreed. He dove for more as Dash did the same, and their hands met somewhere in the middle of the bag, bumping. They both froze.
Jazz held his breath. What to do? Just as he almost made a decision to pull his hand out, he—did he?—felt Dash’s finger move. The soft, warm digit might have caressed the palm of Jazz’s hand. Maybe. Now he really didn’t know what to do.
Two of Dash’s fingers dragged over Jazz’s palm, an area of his body that must have nerves stretching directly to his penis because the pressure produced an equal and opposite reaction. For a second, they sat there, frozen, Jazz’s whole brain dwelling somewhere between his thighs. Then Dash intertwined their fingers and Jazz thought he’d have an orgasm right there, every nerve-ending throbbing.
“Hey you guys, don’t bogart the popcorn.” Carla reached across Dash’s body toward the bag. Fortunately, her eyes remained fixed on the screen where two werewolves were stalking each other through the forest.
Dash managed to let go of Jazz’s fingers, and Jazz pulled his hand out in time to allow Carla to drag the bag away from his erection, which was so huge it could probably shove ten people out of the theater.
She pushed her hand into the bag and palmed popcorn into her mouth as Jazz tried to catch his breath. Just watch the damned movie. He glued his eyes to the screen.
Big mistake. Huge.
It turned out the two werewolves stalking through the forest were a male and female and, just as Jazz fastened his attention on the screen, the male caught his prey and—yes, sports fans—proceeded to mock fuck her into furry oblivion, their long-muzzled, wolf faces contorted in some semblance of canine passion, while their very human bodies, ripped and curved in all the right places, did the dirty with porno cries and moans.
Oh great. Precisely what he needed. Even though the performance redefined the meaning of hokey and he’d seen actual porn that was more convincing, his body refused to laugh. His nerves tingled, hands trembled, and belly clenched as the male penetrated the female from behind. With her opulent chest out of the frame and her wolfy face looking far from feminine, the two could have been any gender. Jazz’s nether parts wanted to view the film from its own point of view.
“This is the worst kind of crap,” Carla complained, following with a litany of snarky comments.
Jazz plastered a grin he hoped looked cool on his face but couldn’t get his staring eyes or painful erection under control.
Carla exploded in ridicule, rocking forward, spilling some of the remaining contents of her huge bag.
Jazz reached out. “Give me that before you share it with the whole theater.” Not that there were a ton of other viewers. If there had been, they would have lynched Carla by then. He rested the bag on top of his mighty erection. It took an extralarge popcorn to disguise the thing. Jeez!
Concentrating on expanding first his belly, then his chest, he sucked in air and tried to focus on something else, like how the denim of his jeans was rubbing uncomfortably on some of his most sensitive parts. His distraction wasn’t working, since it made him think about shit he was trying to ignore. Breathe.
Suddenly, Dash’s hand bumped against Jazz’s thigh and several fingers slid directly across his throbbing, pulsating, denim-covered hard-on. Then he did it! Dash’s fingers closed around the bulge of Jazz’s erection, sending a shock of pleasure into his balls, up his spine, and into his brain. It was so intense, he almost blacked out.
Jazz leaped to his feet. “Oh!” He sucked air and swallowed hard. “I need another cola.” He slid in front of Dash and Carla so fast, he practically took their knees with him. Then he tore down the aisle, forcing himself not to run out of the theater, and finally made it to the men’s room. Inside a stall, eyes closed tight, he ran a hand across his overstressed crotch and practiced diaphragmatic breathing. Dash didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t mean to. It was an accident. It had to be.
After a few minutes, at the end of which he managed to look like he only had a small tumor as opposed to a complete third leg, he walked out to the sinks and ran the coldest water he could muster over his wrists, then put some on his face. He’d have stuck his dick under the faucet if he could have guaranteed no one would walk in. Still, the shock of the cold against his face did its work.
He glanced at his watch. The film was over in ten minutes. Feeling more normal, he walked to the concession stand, got in the longest line, bought a small vanilla cola, and sauntered back to the theater in time to watch the credits roll. As he scooted down his aisle, sipping, Carla scowled at him. “Where the hell did you go for that cola? Georgia?”
“Sorry, the lines were super long.” He smiled at her, then raised his face in the direction of Dash, but he never quite looked at him. “Come on, you have to admit that movie sucked cholesterol-free, pretend eggs.”
She frowned and crossed her arms. “It wasn’t that bad.”
All the rest of the practically nonexistent group of viewers were filing out, so Jazz felt free to grab his chest and start moaning and panting in his own “I’ll have what she’s having” scene. “Oh, oh, you’re such an animal.” He snorted. “No, only half of one. Where did they get those dog masks?”
Carla tried hard to keep glowering at him but finally gave up and laughed. “Okay, I admit. It was craptastic.”
Dash raised a finger. “But craptastic is the pinnacle of crap, therefore worthy of admiration and respect among all things crap.” He rose from his chair, and Jazz only took a tiny glance at his crotch. Apparently, he was unfazed. Oh well. I knew that grab was an accident.
“Let’s go get food. My treat,” Dash said.
Jazz would have agreed to just about anything if it got them away from werewolves mating.
Chapter Seventeen
A FEW minutes later, they’d settled into a booth at one of Jazz and Carla’s favorite burger places. Dash had suggested they go to a steak house, and Jazz had been tempted for a minute, but shook his head. “Nah. Werewolf movies require juicy, messy cheeseburgers with ketchup dripping.” He’d shrugged. “It’s the law of furriness, right, Carla?”
“Gospel. Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself wrote a majority opinion on it.”
Dash had lowered his head solemnly. “Far be it from moi to disagree with the great lady. Burgers it is.”
So now here they were, installed in a booth, staring at the menus. If Dash looked overwhelmed, it was to be expected. After all, this was, in Dash’s words, the pinnacle of burgergasms.
Carla and Jazz ordered for Dash, a Double Splendiferous with cheese, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and extra secret sauce, plus a side order of fries. He asked for a green salad, but Jazz and Carla dissed him so hard, he finally gave up trying to order it.
Jazz would happily have ordered three or fou
r burger patties with a little ketchup, but of course he put on a good show for the humans and asked for two double burgers, hold the lettuce and tomato.
When they’d all gotten their favorite vanilla colas, Carla asked, “So why do you think a werewolf wouldn’t have a wolf face on a human body?” They’d had this argument many, many times. “I mean, they’re half and half, right?” She waved her straw before drowning it in her sugary drink.
Jazz shook his head, as he always did in this conversation. “But why? In what way would that be superior to either pure wolf or pure human? I mean it’s the worst of two worlds. If we’re doing half and half, it should be the human brain on the wolf body, right? Not the other way around. Nature would never be so stupid. The movie producers just want to keep the human bodies so guys can stare at a cute girl’s tits.”
Dash snorted. “Are we really having this conversation?”
“Come on Dash, don’t you agree with me?” Carla whined. “A werewolf ought to be half-human and half-wolf, right?”
Dash glanced at Jazz, but he didn’t smile. Instead he said, “Wouldn’t werewolves more likely be a whole different species of being? One that can appear human but assume a wolf body?” He stared into his drink. “There’s nothing in human DNA that allows for the radical alterations required to become a different form of mammal.”
Carla stared at Dash. “Holy crap, I never expected anyone to give me a scientific explanation.” She glanced at Jazz with wide eyes, shook her head, and changed the subject. “So Dash, what did you like most about your one day of internship?”
He grinned and gave Jazz a side-eyed look. “I could say my brilliant mentor.” He sipped his drink. “I think what I like the most is working for such inspiring people. Mr. Casper Vanessen truly has a brilliant mind. He’s a business genius and a great humanitarian.”
Jazz smiled. “And the best grandfather a guy ever had.”
Dash gave him a crinkle-eyed look. “Sometimes I forget who you are. You must be so proud of him.”