“If you don’t stop, I might drop you on your ass,” he warned.
“Pfft,” scoffed Helena. “You hate it when I get hurt.”
And then, as if daring him to do it, she squirmed against him, rocking the length of her damp sex up along the rapidly filling length of his twitching dick.
It felt so good that Dolf’s vision went a bit grey around the edges, and he missed another step, but he didn’t drop her.
Who could have guessed that wyverns were so delightfully cruel?
Not Dolf, that was for certain.
The length of his apartment’s short hallway had never felt longer, and by the time that he got Helena into his bedroom, Dolf was more than ready to toss Helena on the bed and ravage her.
A sharp tug at his hair, however, distracted him from that plan.
“Not here,” Helena ordered imperiously. “I want to do it in there.”
It took Dolf a moment to realize that she meant the closet.
“But Helena –”
Flushing so hard that Dolf could feel the heat of it flowing up her chest where it pressed against his, Helena murmured in his ear “I want you in my bed, Dolf.”
And what could he possibly have said to that?
Changing directions, Dolf carelessly kicked open his closet’s door, depositing Helena at the end of the camp bed inside.
Going down to his knees in front of her, Dolf used a hand against her hip and another under her knee to tip Helena onto her back. Surprised, she fell backwards with a happy yelp. Eagerly, she raised her legs to hook her knees over Dolf’s shoulders, the light press of her heels against his back silently urging him forwards.
But there Dolf paused, struck by the beauty and the bounty of her.
The mess of band-aids strewn across her shins and calves offended him, of course, but her actual legs were long and slim, the angle of her hips jaunty. Her smooth stomach trembled slightly, and her soft breasts jiggled with the force of her uneven breaths. The top of her chest, as well as her throat and her cheeks, were still flushed pink from her earlier blush, her nipples stiff with it. Helena’s blue eyes were bright, and her golden hair was mussed. Her full lips were curved up into a slightly shy smile, the sight of which sent his already galloping heart into a thundering tattoo in his chest.
She was beautiful.
Their position – him on his knees and her with her knees over his shoulders – had opened the flower of her sex to him, allowing him to admire its slightly darker curls and its pretty pink folds. Under his gaze, she got wetter.
The smell of her at that moment – her sweat and arousal and that underlying brackish scent, the one that went straight to the deepest, most animalistic part of him and said yours – was heady.
“Dolf?” asked Helena, her voice trembling, and Dolf grinned down at her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, watching for a moment with pleasure as her blue eyes widened and that lovely blush of hers returned.
Then he leaned down to give her sex a long, languorous lick, startling another of those cute little squeaks out of her.
Listening to it, Dolf could hardly believe that she turned into anything so fearsome as a wyvern.
The camp bed was much lower than his actual bed, forcing Dolf to half crouch over Helena, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gave him an excellent angle on her clit, allowing Dolf to nose at it, mouth it, lap at it with his tongue. It was when he closed his lips around Helena’s clit, though, and gave it a gentle suck that Helena cried out, her hips jerking under his hands and her heels digging into his back.
Pleased with himself, Dolf continued to lick and suck at her clit throughout her orgasm, only stopping when Helena gave a final, shuddering sigh and tugged at his hair.
Then he came eagerly to her, moving up the length of Helena’s body to kiss her throat, moaning when she turned her head to catch his mouth with hers.
By then, he was rocking against her, his length sliding easily along her wet folds.
“Can I?” he asked, and he felt Helena smile against his lips.
“Yes,” she murmured.
It was all the encouragement that he needed to guide his length to her opening, to push inside and feel Helena’s velvety heat close around the head of his dick.
Dolf’s breath caught in his throat, and he forgot to breath as he entered her in one long, smooth stroke, bottoming out with his hips flush against her.
Under him, Helena arched, the slide of his dick inside her seeming to drive all of the breath out of her in a long, throaty moan.
There, Dolf would have liked to pause, to enjoy the moment, but instinct took over and instead he moved, pulling and thrusting and moving Helena inch by inch up the camp cot. Pleasure pulled through his belly, pooling at the small of his back, and Dolf knew that he couldn’t keep it up for long.
Under him, Helena bucked, her knees tight against his hips as she rose to meet each of his thrusts. And at his shoulders, she clutched. She pulled at Dolf, urging him on, closer, harder. She trembled, yanking Dolf down into a kiss, no, kisses, as her body began to convulse around his. Scratching her short nails into him, Helena came again, the clenching, silken depths of her milking Dolf’s orgasm out of him in turn.
Afterwards they lay together on that cramped cot, too breathless to move yet, a wyvern and her wolf.
Eventually, Helena said “We should do an experiment.”
Drowsily, Dolf hummed at her to show that he was listening. Nuzzling into the space beneath her earlobe, he dropped a kiss there.
“To determine if that’s as much fun in the shower and in the kitchen and maybe in your bed. Everywhere, really.”
Suddenly, Dolf wasn’t sleepy at all. She had his complete and undivided attention.
“And where would you like to do your first experiment?” he asked, his voice husky.
Helena, it turned out, had more than a few ideas.
Chapter 25 – Helena
The next morning, Helena woke up knowing three things.
Firstly, that she had to pee like a race horse.
Secondly, that Dolf needed a bigger bed.
And thirdly, that she had found her soul mate. Apparently, wyverns were like dragons in that respect. She would have liked to mull that over, but she really needed to pee.
Abandoning the bed – and her soul mate – Helena made a mad dash for the bathroom.
And so it was several minutes before Helena could truly reflect on and appreciate her change in circumstances.
Yesterday, she had been a woman in love with a man. Today, she was a woman in love with her soul mate.
It really isn’t very different, Helena concluded, even though it felt entirely different.
It wasn’t like the knowledge that Dolf was the one meant for her, and she for him, was going to change her world or anything in it. She would have stayed with Dolf even if he wasn’t her soul mate, because she loved him. It was more of a… validation of her choice. She had chosen rightly for her.
It was a validation that very few people in this world ever got.
And she was just so, so happy.
Helena wished that she had someone to share her happiness with, but all the people that she wanted to tell were either Severed or worrying themselves needlessly over the fact that their twin had found his soul mate and they hadn’t.
Well, there was one person, who might be interested in hearing that she had found her soul mate.
Tentatively reaching down their new connection, Helena gently prod at Dolf. For answer, she received an unfocused burst of happiness and the mental equivalent of a sleepy burble.
Blissfully happy, Helena went to see if she could figure out how to make pancakes for the one that she loved.
She could not.
But on the bright side, Dolf had some excellent fire alarms.
When Helena dared to compliment him on his choice, Dolf regarded her with utter bemusement. In that moment, she could literally feel how bewildered he was by her.
>
Finally, he said “I’ll make the pancakes.”
“Thank you,” said Helena with great dignity.
Privately, she wondered if she could find someone to give her a few cooking lessons.
Across the room, Dolf shuddered.
After breakfast, which was delicious, Helena officially moved out of her closet and into his bedroom.
“It’s only temporary,” she warned. “I’m looking for a place of my own.”
“Of course,” Dolf agreed indulgently. His pleasure was radiating down the length of their bond.
“Someplace where I can have a proper maid of my own,” added Helena, and indignation flared down the length of their bond.
“What do you need a maid for?”
“Well, you know, all the little things,” said Helena airily then yelped when Dolf grabbed her. Giggling, she let him reel her into his bed – their bed, for now.
“You don’t need to live with anyone else,” growled Dolf. “You’ve got me now.”
And then he proceeded to show her just how much of him she really had.
The next day, Dolf went into work and Helena resumed working on her applications. Now that she knew what she really wanted to do – namely, to compare the evolution of magical species against their more mundane counterparts, past and present – it was easier to know what she should focus on and which contacts she needed to make.
For Helena, it was a happy, productive day, emotions that she tried to share with Dolf, who seemed to be having a frustrating one.
When he got home, he told her that he had had to be the office secretary that day.
The image of Dolf – serious, bad at small talk, but fun once you get to know him – sitting at the long desk in that big front room seems ludicrous to Helena.
“It’s a very important job,” she told him, nearly seriously. “We could practice, if you like.”
“You know that I can feel what you’re feeling, right?” he asked.
“Really?” asked Helena feigning surprise. Inside, she felt impish. “Then what am I feeling now?”
Growling, Dolf grabbed Helena around the waist and swung her off her feet. She was still laughing when Dolf carried her off to bed for a little secretarial practice.
Eventually, after a certain amount of back and forth, Helena landed a couple of part-time jobs: one at a wolf sanctuary and the other at a big cat preserve. To celebrate, Dolf took her out first to dinner and then to a local performance of the Florida Youth Orchestra. Helena was happy, of course, but also slightly confused.
“Didn’t you have to buy these in advance?” she whispered to him after they had been shown to their seats.
“Yes.”
“And you kept it a secret from me?” demanded Helena, half amazed and half outraged.
Dolf’s smirk would have been enough of an answer, even if she couldn’t feel his smug delight with himself at the back of her head. He knew just how excited she was to be here at this performance.
Well, thought Helena, her eyes narrowing even as they dimmed the lights over the audience. Two can play at this game.
She didn’t know when or how yet, but somehow she was going to get Dolf back for this.
Helena never quite got around to moving out or hiring a maid, but she did make other changes to the apartment.
Dolf’s bed was switched out for the mattress and frame from her old apartment, and she put a couple of tall bookcases in the office so that she had somewhere to store her books. Their new sofa came from her old apartment too, as did their silverware, cloth napkins, napkin rings, new side table and some of her framed artworks; but otherwise, Helena sold or donated most of her old things.
Except her car; Helena loved her car.
The first time that Dolf laid on her car, his eyes lit up. Waggling his eyebrows at her in a way that made Helena laugh, he purred, badly, “Hey pretty baby, you want to go for a ride?”
And by then, Helena was laughing so hard that she never stood a chance.
In due course, Helena also claimed half of the walk in closet and three quarters of the counter space in the bathroom, although the kitchen remained entirely his.
And one day, Helena painted the bedroom. She didn’t paint all of it, just one accent wall. Drawing heavily on the one art class that she had taken as a general elective course while she was an undergrad, Helena painted one wall dark green. Over that, she stenciled grey-black tree trunks. Then she had stenciled some leaves onto those trees in a few shades of green before creating a dappling effect using a rough sponge and several other shades of green.
It was a lot of hard work, but she was quite pleased with the final product.
And, down the long line that now connected him, she could feel Dolf’s happiness in her happiness as well as his growing curiosity about what she was up to.
When Dolf actually saw what Helena had painted on their apartment wall, his eyes widened. She could feel how stunned he was, and rushing to fill the silence, Helena quickly said “I thought you might like it? We can paint over it when we move and – mmph!”
There, she was interrupted by Dolf kissing her senseless. And, floating in the light of his happiness, Helena enthusiastically kissed him back.
It was nice to be appreciated.
Time rolled inexorably on, and soon enough Helena found herself called as a witness at the trials of Spencer and Patrick Rothschild. Dolf and Declan were called as well, which was some comfort to her, but overall, Helena was terribly, terribly nervous about the whole thing.
For the first day of court, Helena laid out three different suits before settling on one – the right one, she hoped.
“Hey,” said Dolf, while kissing her temple. “It’s going to be okay.”
Helena hoped that he was right. But she had never enjoyed going to court and going there against two wendigos, one known and the other suspected, seemed worse still.
“Hey, if they try anything else against you, you know I’ll stop them.”
Anxiousness, this time Dolf’s, curled through her belly. He was worried that she didn’t trust him to protect her, not completely.
“I know,” said Helena, letting him feel her faith in him.
She had perfect faith in him. Dolf would try to keep her safe even when all reasonable, rational people would give her up as lost. Helena trusted him completely.
It was the justice system that she worried about.
For her own sake, as well as Mr. Lazarus’ and all the people that they must have hurt to turn themselves into wendigo, she hoped that the district attorney championing Lady Justice was a good fencer.
After all, even the best sword was only as good as the hand that wielded it.
Chapter 26 – Helena
It took awhile to get it all straightened out, but what it had all come down to was money, or rather an acute lack of it, at least as Helena understood things after attending the trial and later reading most of the articles written on the matter.
After years of bad investments and paying off his son’s various horrifying misdeeds, Jonathan Rothschild had been dead broke and struggling to keep up appearances. And so, perhaps reasoning that as they were family what was theirs was his, he began dipping into Patrick and Phyllis’ money on the sly.
Of course, since Jonathan Rothschild had been managing their investments just as poorly as he had been managing his own, they didn’t actually have much money to dip into. In short order, Patrick and Phyllis had also been verging on broke, not that they had known it, apparently.
And then, Spencer Rothschild mauled his friend and threw him down the stairs, managing to grievously wound and ultimately cripple him without actually killing him outright. On a whim, he claimed.
Helena felt that she couldn’t possibly have been the only person in the courtroom to deeply doubt that statement. Wendigos were cannibals, after all. They couldn’t continue to exist, not without eating other people.
It seemed more likely to her that he had been playing with his
food, rather like a cat plays with a mouse. And then his snack had been rescued, and Spencer Rothschild had lost his chance at that meal, at least.
At any rate, Spencer Rothschild’s cruelty had been discovered and, as always, he had gone to his father to have him pay to make the problem go away.
Except this time, he couldn’t. Jonathan Rothschild had been tapped out of money. Phyllis and Patrick Rothschild had been out of money too. The only branch of the once wealthy family with any disposable assets left had been Caroline Pommard, who had shifted her money to an actual management firm years ago at the insistence of her at the time newlywed husband.
And, as Phyllis Rothschild had testified, there had never been any love lost between Caroline and Spencer. There was absolutely no way on this earth, apparently, that Caroline would have covered Spencer’s debts. Nor would she have paid to keep their uncle in the lifestyle to which he was accustomed.
Listening to her, Helena wondered if she had thought that Caroline Rothschild would have kept her and Patrick up. And she wondered what Mr. Lazarus would have thought about that.
At any rate, Spencer Rothschild’s indiscretion had brought matters to a head. Caroline Rothschild had possessed a lot of money, Spencer and Jonathan Rothschild had been in desperate need of it, and so a brake line had been gently encouraged to fail.
Piously, Spencer Rothschild had insisted that he hadn’t known what his father had planned until after it was done and over with. There had been absolutely nothing that he or anyone else could have done to help his poor, dear cousin, Caroline.
Looking at him, at his wide-eyed, guileless expression, Helena hadn’t been so sure about that.
But maybe the district attorney had believed him. Or maybe she just hadn’t been able to find enough evidence of his involvement. Either way, it wasn’t for the murder of Caroline Pommard or the then attempted murder of Mitchell Pommard, the man that Helena had known as Mr. Lazarus, that Spencer Rothschild had been charged.
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