by Renee Carr
“What do you like to do for fun?” I asked Lily as we sat on the floor surrounded by empty Chinese containers and Heineken bottles.
“Around here? I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” she said. “Apparently it’s meeting a guy at a bar, bringing him home, and then watching him turn into a wolf.”
I smiled, taking a sip of my beer. “I don’t know how often you’ll come across that. When you were back in Maryland, what did you do?”
She lifted her brow and shrugged. “To be honest, I’ve been in college for the last five years getting dual degrees, so I pretty much studied all the time. I did go out to a couple of parties, and a club or two in my senior year, but I was really focused on school. Before I came here, my best friend, Tanya, and I would go out to DC and go to the clubs, but it was a big hassle. It was about a forty-five-minute drive from where we lived, so we really couldn’t drink, and then the parking garages all closed before the clubs did, so you had to make sure that you got back to your car and got it out before they closed, otherwise you’d have to stay the night and pay a whole lot of money to get your car out in the morning. Usually the Metro didn’t run that long either.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What’s the Metro?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s like the subway, except not really underground. I guess out here it’s like the train that runs in Chicago, except it’s not a train, it’s a railcar. It takes you all over DC and right on the outskirts of it too. The closest Metro station to us, though, is almost to DC, so it’s pointless and it’s kind of dangerous in that area. There are some cool bars around where we live, but you just get so tired of the homegrown drama and seeing the same faces all the time. My focus has always been my parents’ company.”
“Ha!” I pointed at her. “Now that’s something I can definitely relate to. What kind of business does your family own?”
“It started out as real estate, and then it turned into homebuilding, and now Tucker Industries has pretty much spread out to all kinds of different areas, from distribution to online retailing. You name it, our company probably has a hand in it. We’re not Fortune 500, but I think that’s only because my father and mother aren’t really showy people. Last time I checked, the company made enough to be on the list, but that’s not what we strive for. It’s a legacy more than anything, and it’s provided us a really great life. My mom grew up in southern Maryland, with my grandma and grandpa. They weren’t poor but it was definitely tight. My grandma was a stay-at-home mom and my grandfather was a pipefitter. My mom just wanted more than that.”
I smiled, watching her talk about her family, seeing that she obviously loved them very much. That was hard to find these days. “She sounds a lot like my mom did. She passed away when I was a kid, but she always had that zest for life, that desire for better things for her family. It was all about the memory for her. That one captured moment in time that you could hold onto and with enough of them, you created a whole story. There didn’t need to be cameras or social media or anything like that. It was just about the memories.”
She tilted her head into her hand, batting her eyelashes. “I’m sorry that you lost her. She sounds like an amazing woman. And it sounds like you picked up a lot from her.”
I glanced down at the beer in my hand, suddenly missing my mom more than usual. “And the craziness that’s going on right now, she would’ve taken it in stride. She would’ve had big eyes when we told her about it, even bigger ones when we showed her, and then she would’ve buckled down and tried to figure out how to live the best life that we could with what she would call ‘the gift’ that we were given.”
“That sounds like good advice,” Lily replied.
I shrugged. “It does. I just don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to be like her. When she died, I was little, and I told myself that I wanted to be just like her, to carry on what she had brought to this world. But the older I get, and the crazier life gets, the less I feel like her. I don’t know, it’s stupid. She’s gone and I am me, not her.”
I’m not sure what made me open up to Lily the way that I was, but it felt really good. She crawled forward into my lap and wrapped her legs around me, cupping my face in her hands. She lifted up my head and looked straight into my eyes, the smell of her body and the way that she moved against me immediately arousing.
“You can be anybody that you want to be, and you don’t have to try hard to be your mother; she’s with you all the time,” she said. “I think you’re an amazing person. You have a strength in you that I’ve only seen in a couple of people my entire life. Even those people… I don’t know how they would handle this whole thing. I know we’ve only known each other a couple of days, but I don’t know, there’s something about you that makes me feel…”
I nudged her with my nose, moving in closer. “At home?”
She closed her eyes as I gently kissed her lips, putting my beer down next to me and wrapping my arms around her. There was an intensity to our touch, a connection that nearly paralyzed me. It was a pulsating feeling in my chest, and it surged from her, over to me, and back again, looping us together.
My fingers grazed her arm and slid down to her thighs. She lifted up, her eyes staring into mine as I pulled her dress up and over her head. As she slowly sat back into my lap, her fingers fiddled with the buttons on the front of my shirt. By the time it was completely open, our heat was picking up. Her hips waved against me, rubbing against the erection firm and ready in my pants. She scooted out of my lap and I lifted up on my knees, unbuckling and unzipping my pants. She unclasped her bra as I undressed the rest of the way, her breasts bursting out, bouncing firmly in front of me.
In my boxer briefs, I leaned toward her, kissing her as my hand slipped between her thighs, rubbing my fingers against the satin of her panties. She moaned into my mouth, gripping onto my cock, rubbing it from the outside. Our mouths pressed harder and harder as the passion ignited further. She sat up on her knees and pressed her breasts to my chest, gripping the sides of my boxers and tugging. My cock sprung out, and I pushed her back on the ground, slipping the boxers off the rest of the way and following up with her panties.
Reaching up, she gripped me around the back of the neck, her strength almost surprising. It was hot and needy as her fingernails dug into my flesh—a painful pleasure I couldn’t get enough of. I came toward her, holding myself up with one hand while she swished her tongue back and forth in my mouth, her legs latched around my waist. I gripped beneath her lower back as I dipped my hips, pushing my swollen cock deep inside of her.
She whimpered with her mouth still glued to mine as I began to thrust. Her lips released and she gasped for air, her fingers now pushing into the floor, trying to find something to hold on to. I felt deep and animalistic, my teeth grinding as I gripped her waist with both hands and growled, slamming inside of her.
Her head leaned back and she screamed in pleasure as we moved in short, rhythmic bursts. “Yes, God. Yes.”
As if we were caught in a dance, she turned left as I did, and we swung around each other, landing me on my back as she straddled me, sliding down hard. Her body moved like a wave and I gripped tightly to her ass, lifting her up and down as she did. Her hands came up, gripping tightly to her tits, rubbing her thumbs over her nipples as her eyes shut and her breathing increased.
She started to bounce faster and I thrust my hips upward, pumping into her, meeting her with a slap of our skin. She hissed, hands gripping tighter to her breasts. “God, I’m going to come. Don’t stop.”
I groaned at the words, reaching up and holding her still, just above as I pumped into her faster and faster. She moaned as her back arched and her head leaned back. Her entire body stiffened in my hands and she filled her lungs, holding it as her orgasm exploded through her. The feeling of her pussy pulsating against me as she shivered and writhed on top sent me spiraling over the edge. I thrust up once, twice, and on the third, I pulled her down hard on my cock, moving her hips in circles as I released, feeling
a deeper rush of pleasure than ever before.
We circled around the waves of ecstasy together until both of us were so spent, she collapsed on top of me and curled into my arms. We lay there in silence for several minutes. Lily picked her head up and narrowed her eyes, looking out the window. “Uh oh, it’s a full moon.”
I chuckled and howled sarcastically. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”
Reaching up and pulling the blanket from the couch down on us, she giggled, laying her face on my chest. “I know. I just think it’s funny. Eventually, you won’t be scared of changing anymore. You’ll be able to control it yourself.”
I glanced down at her, wondering how she knew so much about wolf shifters. She had to be one human out of a million. That triggered something in my mind, and I suddenly remembered her warp speed that morning. “Oh yeah, I meant to ask you. How in the hell did you get to my car before me this morning? Do you have jet packs?”
I looked down at her but she said nothing. Rubbing her arm, I whispered her name. She turned her head slightly and I could see her eyes closed. She had fallen asleep on my chest. I smiled and grabbed a pillow from above me, tucking it under my head. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and settled in, truly believing Lily could be the one.
12
Brighton
“I think I came here when I was about 10 years old with my grandfather for breakfast one morning,” Lily said, looking around the diner. “I had begged him to get up early and go with him to the farmers’ market so he could get grandma eggs and everything else she would need for the day. He eventually said yes and woke me up, surprising me with pancakes at the diner for breakfast. It was one of my favorite memories of my grandfather.”
I looked around the familiar restaurant, having probably spent more time in it than I had anywhere else in my teenage years. “I remember coming here with my mother once, and my brothers, but every time after that, it was as a teenager, hanging out with friends, taking girls on cheap dates, and getting grub after we had drunk too much sitting in the local park.”
Lily giggled. “That’s exactly what I would imagine teenagers did here. I think it’s great. Where we grew up, there were some parties out in the country, when you went toward Virginia, but other than that, we either went out pretty far away or went to house parties which usually ended up with somebody calling the cops and a mass exodus of cars.”
Doris, the usual waitress, waved at me from across the room. I nodded at her and smiled. “The cops gave us a hard time sometimes, but the sheriff never really cared much. He wanted to make sure everybody was safe, but most of us were pretty smart about it. There really isn’t anywhere in this town you can’t walk to or walk from, and if you really need a ride that bad, most of the people in this town would give you one. Sometimes, the old sheriff, he would ride around at night in his civilian car to all the regular party spots and if anybody needed a ride home, he would give it to them, no questions asked, not even a mention to the parents. He just wanted to make sure that we were all safe.”
“Did the sheriff have a deputy?” Lily asked.
I thought about it for a second. “I’m sure he did.”
She nodded at me, a serious look on her face. “Was his name Barney?”
It took me a second to get it and then I rolled my eyes. “No, and our town name is Galena, not Mayberry.”
She giggled as Doris walked up to the table. “Brighton, are you having your usual today?”
“Yes, but I want to also add two eggs scrambled with cheese, four pieces of bacon, and a bowl of fruit,” I replied.
Doris blinked at me for a second. “You want to add that to the biscuits and gravy and side of pancakes? Do I need to go see your father and tell him that he needs to feed you more often?”
Lily chuckled as Doris turned to her. “What can I get you, sweetheart?”
“Hell, make it two,” she said with a grin.
Doris lifted her eyebrows, looking down at Lily and her tiny frame. “This is definitely going to be an interesting day.”
I watched Lily with awe as she downed the food like she was starving. I didn’t know what to say. She was a tiny little thing yet she ate just about as much as I did. When she finally put her fork down and Doris came over to take the plates, she didn’t say a word. As Doris left, I leaned forward and smiled. “You sure you don’t have wolf in you? You eat like one and obviously you don’t gain weight like you eat.”
Lily leaned back and patted her flat stomach. “I would eat some pie but I feel like the waitress is going to start getting suspicious of us.”
Slowly leaning back, I chuckled, rubbing my chest. I swallowed hard, feeling a burning deep down inside. I cleared my throat and took a drink of water. Lily looked up at me, tilting her head to the side. “Are you okay?”
Her voice echoed in my head, and I felt dizzy and disoriented. It was reminiscent of the first time I changed. As the thought flickered through my mind, panic hit my system. I stood up, knocking my chair over. Lily’s eyes went wide and she grabbed her purse, pulling out some cash and throwing it on the table. She walked around and grabbed my arm, then led me out of the restaurant. “Just breathe. I’m taking you back to my house. Just breathe. You can’t change here. If you shift, you could hurt somebody.”
I tried my best to walk upright, to not look strange. Several children ran past us laughing, and the sounds just reverberated painfully through my head. I couldn’t even see where I was walking, relying solely on Lily to lead me. When we reached her house, she hurried me up the steps and to the door. There was an anger surging through me that I didn’t know how to explain. It came out of nowhere and was ravaging me from the inside out. I felt like my wolf was slashing and growling and biting all inside of me. I tried to talk to him, to calm him, but we weren’t connected enough.
I gripped onto the door frame and stumbled into the house, getting a few paces inside and falling to my knees. I grabbed at my shirt, pulling it over my head and throwing it to the side. I could tell I didn’t have long—the change was coming and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The pain began to surge through my entire body, and it twisted and curved, my bones crackling and my muscles stretching. I could feel every inch of my body changing. I could feel the tips of the fur sprouting from my skin, the claws coming from my fingertips, and my head felt like it was going to burst.
Just like before, with one last rush of pain, the shift was complete. All around me were remnants of my pants and boots, and small tufts of hair floated in the air. I slowly rose onto my legs, growling at myself, feeling the anger getting heavier and heavier inside of me. Everything was foggy, and I could tell that my wolf was trying to take completely over. I wasn’t going to let that happen, though; it was too risky. On the inside, I fought with the wolf, but on the outside, I thrashed around, stumbling into the wall, knocking over several things in the hallway and snarling and slobbering as I did it.
“Brighton,” Lily’s voice echoed in my head. “You need to calm down. You’re safe. If you just calm down, you’ll be able to change back.”
My eyes shifted all over the room, looking for her, but I couldn’t see her. I shook my head, letting it continue down my neck, across my spine, into the tip of my tail. When I looked up again, there she was, standing between me and the door, putting her hands up. I squeezed my eyes shut again as the anger surged back through me. I knew I couldn’t trust my wolf, and I was terrified that I was going to do something to hurt Lily, even if it wasn’t on purpose.
I knew I had to get out of there, and I had to get out of there fast. Pressing the pads of my paws into the floor and tensing my muscles, I took off running straight for the door, trying to keep my vision off of Lily. Her calming would make me slow, but it wouldn’t do anything to my wolf—he was hell-bent on getting out of there. As I raced past her, I could feel my body clip hers, sending her falling to the ground. When the thud rang out behind me, I came to a skidding stop in the doorway and looked back.
I eased up my fight with the wolf as we entered into the woods and out of sight. Speaking to it in my head, I became calm and collected. “If you want a power struggle, we can have one. I’m not leaving these woods until you know exactly who’s in charge. We can’t hurt people, and that’s just what we did. We hurt the person that takes care of us.”
My wolf whimpered in my head, and my legs began to slow. My wolf and I were at odds, but I was damn sure that by the time I went back, there would be an understanding. That, or we couldn’t go back.
13
Lily
I winced, sitting up on the entryway floor. As I pulled my left arm up, I cried out in pain, gripping my elbow with my right hand. It felt broken, or at least really badly bruised. There was a connection between me and Brighton, there was no denying that. I was there, and I didn’t plan on going anywhere, but, man, he was really hard to deal with. This time was different than the last—he was fighting with something inside of his own mind. He had thrashed back and forth and didn’t even look at me as he raced by.
There was going to be a period of time where he had to get used to his wolf, and his wolf to him, but it had to be done in a more constructive manner. Luckily, he had enough brains to go straight for the woods and maybe run it off. I knew there was nothing I could do to help that relationship between his wolf and himself, but there had to be something I could do to make the relationship between us easier when he went through those moments.