by T. F. Walsh
“I want you to apologize.”
“For what? Overstepping personal bounds? Giving a shit that you’re hurting yourself? I need you to be specific.” He narrowed his eyes and captured her lips in a soft kiss. “I don’t want to fuck this up.”
Izzy’s leg went slack and she pushed up his head. “How about for your completely tactless and sexist comment?”
“Oh,” Curtis went back on his heels. “You want me to apologize for being honest when you asked me.”
“That’s — ”
Curtis put his finger to Izzy’s lips. “Shh, I want you to watch this. Observe, for I shall withstand your many trials.” Izzy rolled her eyes. “I’m going to count to three. If you tell me to fuck off before then, I’ll apologize just how you like and leave. If you don’t kick me out you’ll still get your apology, but I’m doing it my way.” He lifted his finger from her lips. “Ready?”
Izzy’s eyes slitted as he bent his head to her chest. She should have bit his finger.
“One … ” Curtis feathered his lips between her breasts.
“Two … ” He worked himself down Izzy’s body, planting kisses on her shuddering stomach and easing her thighs apart with his palms.
“Two and a half … ” The countdown feint made Izzy start. Curtis glanced up at her and took the flesh of her thigh between his teeth. Holding her breath, she prepared herself for the ominous “three” that never came.
Curtis’s head darted between her legs. His hot mouth covered her clit and he fluttered his tongue against her. Startled, she squeaked and bucked up. Without pause in his “apology,” he steadied her hips under his hands and pressed her into the mattress, holding her in place. She clenched the rumpled sheets in her fist, furious he hadn’t gone to three, but too pleased with the result to make a fuss.
Spreading her wider, Curtis ran his tongue up the length of her slit, bestowing a sucking kiss to her clit before sliding one finger inside her. Izzy let out a panting moan as her climax uncurled from the base of her spine like an eager tendril at first light. The shock of cool air on her wetted sex when he suddenly withheld all contact sent that tendril retreating into a tightly wound bud. He restrained her as she groaned her displeasure.
“You know,” Curtis said, looking up at her, “I think I deserve an apology, too.” He licked the delicate crease between her thigh and her open sex. “Can you say ‘I’m sorry for snapping at you, Curtis?’” Parting his lips over her clit, he warmed her with his breath, but he wouldn’t touch her.
“Curtis.” Izzy struggled to lift herself to him but he kept her firmly in place.
“That’s not how it starts,” he chided.
Izzy growled and slammed her head into her pillow, thrashing when he teased her with the lightest flick of his tongue.
“I’m sorry,” the word “sorry” pitched high when Curtis closed his mouth on her, rolling his tongue against her clit. “I’m sorry, sorry for … ”
“Mmmmhmmmm?” Curtis hummed into her and Izzy couldn’t get enough air to form the words he wanted. Shivering, gossamer filaments looped her spine and snaked toward her brain, lacing her vision with sparkles of white light. He hesitated at her unintelligible moans and relaxed his grip and her hand shot out, fisting in his hair.
The tip of Curtis’s tongue circled her clit. “Greedy,” he said and settled between her open lips, pushing two fingers into her pulsing entrance.
Izzy yelped at the sudden pressure and her back arched. The tendrils flirting with her spine constricted and vaulted unbearable ecstasy into her brain, pitching her heavenward.
Waiting until Izzy’s spasms weakened, Curtis untangled her clenched fingers from his hair, sheathed himself in one of the condoms from her bedside table, yanked her legs around him, and thrust his cock into her. Her tight space stretched and clamped around him as she trembled with the stoked aftershocks of her climax. With her legs tight around his waist, he wormed his arms under her shoulders and lifted her from the mattress to his mouth. The taste of her sex was on him, strange, but not unpleasant, as her tongue twined with his. She dug her nails into his back as he pounded into her, faster and faster until he gasped, tightening his mouth over hers. Deep grunts punctuated each spurting thrust.
Curtis’s arms relaxed around Izzy as his pleasure waned. He eased her back onto the bed before he moved out of her and collapsed at her side, pulling her to his chest. She pounded him with her fist, the playful strike bouncing off his solidity.
“You never said ‘three,’” she managed between labored breaths.
“That’s ok,” Curtis said, stroking her hair. “You never got the whole apology out.”
“That doesn’t make it ok.”
“Yes, it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Curtis sighed in resignation and a passing car from the street below made the only sound besides their slowing breaths for a long time. Izzy snuggled into his side, smug with victory.
“Yes,” Curtis snuck in just before she drifted off.
• • •
In the morning, Curtis was gone, but he hadn’t gone far. Izzy smelled fresh coffee. The sound of clanking pots and pans traveled from the living area. Her alarm clock read eight twenty-two A.M.
What could he possibly have found to cook? She hadn’t been to the grocery in a week.
Trudging to the bathroom, Izzy rubbed her bleary eyes and started the shower, brushing her teeth while the water heated. Her floss and mouthwash were already out. Curtis must have used them. After completing her morning maintenance, she gathered her damp hair into a neat bun and dressed in her standard warm-up wear: leotard, tights, sweat pants, leather flats.
“You’ve certainly made yourself comfortable,” Izzy said when she found Curtis with his head stuck in her fridge. “What the hell are you doing?”
Curtis stayed wedged in the fridge. “You’ve got water, fruit, some wilting salad mix, cream, and eggs.” He righted himself and stared at her over the fridge door. “How am I supposed to make us scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast when you don’t have any bacon? Or bread.”
“There’s an IHOP right off the service road if you’re hungry.” Izzy’s voice was flat as she headed to the barre. She needed her prosthetic for her exercises and considered kicking Curtis out so she could go through her routine in private. She spun around to tell him so and held back. Barefoot and shirtless, wearing only his low slung jeans, he flipped open the egg carton with his back mostly to her. He sniffed the eggs and wrinkled his nose. There was something about his obtrusive presence she enjoyed besides the attractive figure he cut from the back. He seemed natural in her space and, oddly, she didn’t want to disturb him as he lifted one pan, then another, comparing the two.
Izzy fastened her harness and tensed and flexed her arm muscles, contracting her body-powered hand’s jointed fingers. “Can you poach an egg?” she asked and gripped the barre with her left hand, eyes on the chef’s bare back. Usually, she began facing the mirror, but didn’t feel like conversing with Curtis’s reflection. With her right arm out and curved as elegantly as her prosthetic allowed, she bent her knees in the first plie series in first position. Her joints creaked and her stiff muscles yawned with a burning ache as they came alive.
“Ah, I can scramble,” Curtis said, glancing over his shoulder. “Sometimes I can go sunny side up, but I can’t promise I won’t break the yolks.”
“Breakfast is a grapefruit half with an egg on the side. Try sunny side up if you’re set on cooking.”
“I’m not banished to IHOP?”
“If you absolutely need bacon and toast that’s where you’re getting them.” Izzy rose into relevé and her toes cracked.
“You don’t want to come?”
“I can’t have all that grease sitting in my stomach while I teach my soloists. I have a private session at the st
udio at eleven.” Curtis appeared to accept this as rational and commenced cooking while Izzy did her warm ups.
The eggs were overdone and salty enough to dry out Izzy’s mouth, but the grapefruit was very pink and its meat juicy. She finished both and didn’t whisper a word of dissatisfaction. Curtis stuck with coffee, adding so much cream and sugar she thought the mixture might whip into an espresso mousse when he stirred it.
“You see,” he said when she set her utensils down, “I can’t be sexist. I made breakfast. Watch me clean.” Curtis whisked her plate away before Izzy lifted a finger. He smelled like her vanilla bath wash.
“Being barefoot in my kitchen doesn’t excuse your behavior last night,” she said with a smile she tried to hide.
“My instincts I cannot help,” Curtis said, rinsing her plate in the sink. “Only how I respond to them.”
Izzy hadn’t run her maced dance bag through the wash yet and had to scour her closet for an old backpack. After stuffing what she needed for class into the bag, she threw on a fresh pair of jeans, boots, a low hemmed gray tank top, and her comfy — and snuggly warm — bathrobe style sweater. Retrieving her spare keys from her everything-goes-in-it-drawer out front, she eyed a clothed Curtis who sat spread eagled on her couch, frowning at his phone and tapping something out on its green-lighted buttons.
“I’m heading out,” Izzy said.
Shoving his phone in his pocket, Curtis jumped from the couch. “You want to meet for lunch?”
“You’re not going back to DeConing?” Izzy asked as she headed to the front door.
“Not ’til tomorrow. There are a few things I need to do in town.”
“We could meet for lunch.” The acceptance tumbling from Izzy’s lips was a shock as was the little flip her stomach performed. “You’ll have to meet me at the studio at one. I won’t have time to get a new phone until my session’s over.”
“Great,” he said and followed her out of the apartment, beaming all the way.
They parted at the front of the building. Visitor parking was on the opposite side of the complex and Izzy turned down Curtis’s escort offer to her car. Clambering into her SUV, she backed from her reserved space and maneuvered to the street. Curtis’s Jeep idled by the curb. Exasperated, she clenched the wheel. He wasn’t waiting for her, was he?
Izzy squinted. Curtis sat in the driver’s seat, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder as he adjusted something on his dash. His face was tight, angry, and his mouth opened wide when he responded to whomever he spoke. His right hand came down in a chopping motion, visually articulating whatever point he made. Abruptly, he flipped his phone shut and hurled it onto the passenger seat. His jaw worked and he ran his hands through his hair. A lightning-strike vein stood out at his temple.
Izzy turned into the street and drove past without making eye contact.
• • •
Curtis’s phone cracked against the door then plopped onto the passenger seat. Not yet. He couldn’t bring Izzy to the lodge yet. And not how Thomas wanted.
“You’re telling me you can’t overpower a hundred and fifteen pound woman?” his Alpha had snarled over the line.
“I’m telling you it doesn’t have to be that way,” Curtis had shot back. “Do we have to accomplish everything by force?”
“It’s easy and efficient.”
“It’s inhuman.”
Neither of them had uttered a word for a good while until Thomas had countered, “I can send Gerome if you’re not up to this. I’m sure he’d have fun.”
Curtis’s blood pressure had skyrocketed and he had to take care not to crush the phone cradled next to his ear.
“Let me do this my way. Give me a week,” Curtis had said.
“A we — ”
“She’ll come to us on her own next weekend. She doesn’t have to know what we are and what we’re doing. All she has to do is lure Rapid out, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then we don’t have to hurt her.”
“If she’s not here by Saturday, I’m sending Gerome after her,” the Alpha had said and had hung up.
A week. Curtis bought Izzy one week. He couldn’t spend it with her, but he could find a way back into her bed at least for tonight.
“Fuck!” He punched the dash, splitting the plastic casing above his stereo and his knuckles. Clear-Skies arced in a thin, blue line, the wolf spirit goaded out of slumber by his host’s fury. The spirit line undulated, tickling Curtis’s heart, then contracted into a disgruntled knot.
Drawing back his fist, Curtis scowled at his damaged hand. Blood seeped from his gashed and stinging knuckles. A warm, red trail oozed down his clenched fingers. Surprisingly, Clear-Skies deigned to loosen from his sulk. The wolf spirit shot a tendril from its wispy central mass down Curtis’s arm. A tongue of cold fire licked from behind the broken skin of his hand and the wounds sealed.
“I didn’t deserve that,” Curtis said.
Sees-Through-Clear-Skies collected himself, coiled into a spiral, and retracted back into his sulky knot. Wolf spirits protected their hosts. It was part of whatever bargain whoever had made however many years ago, enabling the spirits to pass into human bodies. Curtis didn’t care about the details or the history. He knew what he had to. Clear-Skies had been his father’s wolf and Keene Lodge had been his father’s land. They were Curtis’s responsibility. The pack should have been, too.
Robert Keene had been the pack Alpha, but when he died, that honor passed to Thomas, Robert’s business partner and former Beta. Initially, the power transfer pleased Curtis. He could care for the lodge and the land, but other people? No thanks. Lording over everyone wasn’t his style. Thomas took to the position well. Too well. Pack and lodge management had slowly merged until one became indistinguishable from the other. As Beta, Curtis couldn’t say much about the takeover. Thomas would never own Keene Lodge, but he owned its owner and Curtis liked that less and less.
The last few years were the worst. Thomas wanted arranged matings. He’d nudged Curtis in Melinda’s direction with no success. Curtis loved the kid, but not that way. He shuddered. If Thomas chose, he could command the mating and backed with the Alpha’s power … no. Thomas wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that crazy, not even with his recent ramblings about the Werewolves’s “true purpose” that Mountain’s-Might supposedly divulged to him when he and his wolf spirit communed. The older their Alpha got, the more zealous and closer to his wolf he became, preaching to the pack about a “coming darkness” that only the Werewolves could stand against. Curtis had hovered around his bullshit limit for a while, keeping the peace like a Beta did, but Izzy threw a monkey wrench in all that.
The first woman Curtis wanted as more than a now-and-then playmate and the Alpha pulled her into pack politics. Curtis’s wants were so simple. He wanted to keep up the lodge and start a family, eat good food, and keep a roof over his head. That’s it. What he wanted with Izzy was also simple. He wanted her with him. They were good together. You didn’t need years to figure that crap out. She looked good, smelled good, made him feel good in all the right ways and places. The one thing she wasn’t was a Werewolf. Big deal.
Curtis banged his head on the steering wheel. Yes, big deal. Very big deal. After the pack took care of the Rapid problem, he wanted Izzy in his life. If he were careful, she wouldn’t ever know what went on next weekend. He could protect her from the rogue wolf and his Alpha and she’d be none the wiser. Then, after a few months, he’d break his nature to her easy.
I like long hikes on nature trails, hunting, and peeing with one leg lifted. By the way, I’m a Werewolf …
“I’m a Werewolf, Izzy,” he muttered to the steering wheel. “But I’ll never hurt you, I swear.” He jammed his key into the ignition and fired up the Jeep. There were some wolves in town he had to see. Besides tracking Izzy, he meant to find out if
anyone else knew anything about some enemy or “darkness” they were supposedly destined to fight. Thomas might be an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. Dismissing him was a mistake. On the way to the Tavella pack’s den, he’d figure out how to keep Izzy close for the rest of the weekend.
Chapter Five
“Travis, what are you doing? You’re shrinking. Keep your shoulders up and back. No, not up by your ears. You’ve done this a hundred times. I know you know how.”
Izzy crossed the studio floor to Travis, the young man cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy’s Cavalier for the Glazier Studio’s production of The Nutcracker. Dark haired, fine boned, and broad shouldered already at his age, the boy was the picture of petulant aristocracy in his costume regalia with his black expression and hunched stance. The Sugar Plum Fairy, a particularly talented student called Amanda, went over her solo choreography while her partner sulked. Sunlight shafting through the large windows made her blond hair gleam.
Body curved in on itself, Travis averted his eyes as Izzy approached. She corrected his posture, giving his lower back a gentle swat when it curved outward again.
“Travis — ”
“Madame Tunskill?” Amanda’s voice quavered.
Izzy looked over at the girl who eyed the studio windows warily.
“I think that man wants to talk to you.” Amanda pointed.
Hands pressed to the studio’s picture window, a brown bag clutched in one of them, Curtis waited until he had Izzy’s attention before mouthing, “Can I come in?”
“One second, guys,” Izzy said and trotted to the studio door, waving Curtis over. She was ridiculously happy to see him, which gave her pause. Her mind should have been on Travis and Amanda and it wasn’t. The session had been nothing but frustrating and the promise of a lunch date after work further strained her patience. Cold air swirled around her ankles when she let Curtis inside. “Would you please stop scaring my students?” she rebuked him as she shooed him into her office, closing the door most of the way behind them. “You’re a little early. I still have half an hour with them and we may need to go over.” She checked her watch.