by Eden Myles
“You’re so gross, Jilly.”
Jill, feeling more than a little mischievous and a whole lot horny, threw the sock at Ethan, who ducked it expertly. “Wimp.”
“Tomboy.”
“Pretty boy.”
“Why, yes I am. Thanks for noticing.”
They laughed at each other and their own foolishness. Ethan indicated the TV. “Remember this?”
Jill’s eyes grew wide. “Is that Grave of the Werewolf?”
“Yep.”
“I thought I recognized it!”
“Do you remember the first time we saw it…?” Ethan started but was interrupted when his cell phone went off and the ringer that Jilly had programmed into it—Shakira’s She Wolf—began tittering its familiar little ditty. He took pains to ignore it, but when it continued to ring, she pointed. It might be important, after all.
Sighing, he grabbed it up off the nightstand and hit Talk. Soon he was hip-deep in a rapid-fire conversation with one of his associates at work. Another girl might have gotten angry at the interruption, but Jill admired Ethan’s dedication to his work. It reminded her of how very different they were, how they came from different worlds.
Ethan loved people. He was a people person. A contract lawyer by trade, he was a junior partner at Martin Law Associates, which specialized in Six Nations law out on the Allegany Reservation. It wasn’t the glamorous life of a big-city attorney, of course, but important to his people, and he was very good at what he did. She’d been out to the rez with him many times. They were good people desperately trying to hang onto their way of life, and Ethan made sure they had the representation they so desperately needed.
With his coffered good looks and smart suits, it was easy to mistaken Ethan for a trust fund baby who’d had the world handed to him on a silver platter. But the truth was he’d had to scratch and fight for everything he had now.
She got up, shed the rest of her clothes, and walked dirty and naked into the bathroom to run the shower, pulling the rubber band from her long, silky, dark auburn hair. She was pleased to see that despite the important conversation he seemed to be having, Ethan’s eyes followed her with greedy, carnivorous interest.
Good. This past week had been hell on both of them, and they had been too tired at night for even a quickie. Tonight Jill’s hormones were in overdrive. If she didn’t see some action between the sheets, she’d have to do something else to cool her lust—maybe get in a run, though she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Letting the wolf run, even in the relative safety of the PAWS sanctuary, presented its own problems. She’d upset the other animals, for one thing, and someone working the late shift might spot her.
Over the years, she’d gotten very good at hiding that part of her life from everyone, including Ethan, and she had no intentions of blowing her cover. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror behind the door—her long, strong, muscular body, dark, almost sable hair, milky, freckled skin and bright sea-green eyes that could flash to yellow in a heartbeat, if she wasn’t careful. She’d never considered herself conventionally beautiful, but Ethan said she was very sexy with a strong animal magnetism that drove him wild, and that was good enough for Jill.
She considered her life as she got into the shower and let the needles of hot water wash the grime away and massage her sore muscles. Her own past had been very different from Ethan’s. Ethan was human and had grown up hard and fast on the rez, beset on all sides by poverty, alcoholism and despair. His father had been one mean drunk, and his grandfather had raised him for most of his childhood. He’d had to scrape and claw his way to the top. Jill had been born a Pedigree werewolf in the Bloodmoon Pack, and her sire and pack alpha, Roman La Feuvre, had been kind, strong and well moneyed. She’d wanted for nothing and her father had treated her like a little princess. Then his alpha mate, Anya—a woman not her dame but extremely jealous of her—drove her from her father’s pack.
Jill’s life changed after that. Drastically. Almost overnight, she went from being a typical spoiled, selfish princess to a homeless vagrant who had to look after herself and scrape out an existence. As a young werewolf alone in the early 1960’s, she was both unprepared for the world as well as a little naïve to it. They’d been hard years for Jill, and she had done more growing up in them than all the decades prior.
If the Le Feuvres were anything, they were survivors. She sought employment, then an education at university. Soon, she began looking towards the future, seeking new ways that werewolves and human might cohabitate the planet. As the years slowly passed, Jill became something of a mover and shaker in ecological circles. She began writing dissertations and visiting universities. When the chance to join PAWS presented itself, Jill jumped at it even knowing that she couldn’t spend too many years with the organization. As a werewolf, she aged much too slowly, and in time the humans would notice. In fact, in only a few more short years she would need to make some very difficult decisions about her life, none of which she wanted to think about tonight.
She loved her life, and she loved her boyfriend. Knowing how much Ethan had struggled and sacrificed to get out of the ghetto and get a good education for himself only made her love him more, and made her immensely proud to be his girlfriend. It made her appreciate even more the privileges she had known at birth.
They’d met at Ithaca College six years ago. Ethan had been an undergrad, and Jill had been there to speak about various environmental issues affecting the wildlife of upstate New York. By then, she had traveled the world extensively and had seen firsthand what the humans had done to the environment and its creatures. They got into a terrific debate over what was more in danger of dying out—at risk wildlife or the lifestyle of the Iroquois, Ethan’s native people. Ethan had angrily called her a crunchy-earthy tree-hugger and had stormed out of the lecture hall. She figured she’d never see him again.
The following night he showed up at her hotel door, a beautiful red and white orchid in a pot and a goofy smile on his face. He apologized for what he called his “ungentlemanly behavior”. When she asked him why he’d brought her an orchid, of all things, he said he didn’t believe in cut flower. He wanted to give her something that would live and thrive. Jill immediately reassessed her opinion of this passionate and unusual young man and let him take her to dinner at a swanky, high-scale restaurant in the city.
They had a wonderful time and Jill let Ethan kiss her for the first time. The following day, a little background research revealed that Ethan was so poor he worked as a night stocker at the local supermarket and ate Ramens almost every night. That he was willing to spend so much money he didn’t have just to woo her like a proper suitor broke her heart. The following night, she asked him out, though this time, they went to one of the last remaining authentic drive-ins in the state. They’d gorged themselves on cheap nachos and hotdogs and watched Grave of the Werewolf.
The movie wasn’t scary in the last—at least, not compared to what Jill had experienced in her life as a werewolf—but she screamed at all the appropriate times anyway and hid her face in Ethan’s shirt, just like a real woman. They made out, then went back to her hotel room, where they made crazy love and talked all night long. They’d been inseparable ever since.
If he had one flaw, it was that Ethan could be erratic and a little insecure at times. He worked hard at coming off as worldly and well off in an attempt to hide his poverty-stricken upbringing, but she knew that in his heart he believed he wasn’t worthy of her, no matter how much she tried to dispel that idea.
One thing was for certain, though—Ethan thrived at formal get-togethers, cocktail balls and fundraisers. He was a natural people person. Jill took him with her whenever she needed to beg money out of the suits. Jill, for her own part, had little tolerance for the social ways of humans. Most of them were dangerous and underhanded, and seldom did they say what they meant. She knew that if they knew what she was, they would put her in a cage—or worse, some lab, and study her until her spirit withered and she died.
In that way, she and Ethan were worlds apart. Jill had no idea how Ethan could stand being cooped up in an office all day, mitigating politics and human law, and Ethan shirked at Jill’s messy, sweaty, tiring job of caring for injured animals. Yet they always managed to meet in the middle somehow.
Once, during one of many fundraisers, she found Ethan in the bathroom of the governor’s mansion, having a panic attack. He said that his first year in college, he’d been romantically involved with a guy, that he considered himself pansexual. Jill hadn’t known that, not that it made any difference to her; her ex had been similarity inclined. But Ethan’s partner had been abusive, and when he tried to break it off, he threatened to kill himself. Eventually, Ethan made the difficult decision to leave the guy regardless of his threats. Ironically—or maybe not, all things considered—his ex hadn’t killed himself after all, and, he informed her, he was out there now, mingling with the others at the party. She’d managed to talk him down and they had returned to the party, where Ethan had found the confidence and inner strength to not just shake his ex’s hand but be more cordial than ever.
Ethan’s strength of character was astonishing, and it was then that Jill knew he was a keeper. She guessed that some women would fret constantly over losing a man as handsome, strong and successful as Ethan. Any mysterious phone call or text could be a potential paramour. Tonight, though, as she shampooed her long hair, then rinsed it out, she took solace in the idea that Ethan being unfaithful to her—with either sex—was unlikely at best. For one thing, he never smelled of anyone but her. For another, he was simply too nice of a guy to cheat on her.
Maybe too nice, she thought ubiquitously. He loved small dogs and children. He visited his grandfather on the rez religiously. He remembered every holiday and anniversary with frightening clarity and detail. He was organized and responsible—the perfect boyfriend, her friends said. He was about as different from her ex Giovanni as day was from night.
Jill shuddered. Memories of her short time with Giovanni and the Rhea Silvia Pack, running and hunting with them in the forest, sent a shiver of both pleasure and pain down her spine. She remembered what it felt like to be with Giovanni, to touch and smell the wild, carnal scent of him. She remembered comfort and safety in his arms in the years following her exile, but she also remembered the bad things, the carnage and mistrust. Giovanni was a dangerous alpha wolf. He was not merely suspicious of humans like she was—he hated them outright. They were just obstacles in his endless desire to acquire things. She knew he’d eat someone like Ethan for lunch and spit out the bones.
She reminded herself that bad boys were overrated. You didn’t marry the bad boy. You married guys like Ethan. Guys you could depend on. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the two great loves of her life facing off, polar opposites of each other. Her hand moved almost of its own accord down to her wet, aching labia to rub at the itch that never seemed to go away.
Quickly, she turned off the shower and toweled off her hair. She walked, still naked, back into the bedroom. A large, athletic woman, almost six feet, with plenty of curves that she had no desire to starve away, she immediately caught Ethan’s eye. He was still on the phone, but when he saw her standing there, shamelessly showing off the body that Odin had gifted her with—firm, big breasts, strong yet incredibly flexible bones, and long, muscular legs—he cut his party short and told them he had to go.
Jill detected a blush in the apples of Ethan’s cheeks as he hung up. His boyish good looks were made all the sexier by his dark, lustful eyes and the hungry curve of his soft lips. Her easy nudity both thrilled and embarrassed him to no end.
“You know you really are the most amazing woman, Jilly,” he said, setting his laptop aside.
Damp from her shower, she climbed over the foot of the bed, moving with an undulating grace that always turned him on. Her heart was thudding in her chest and the place between her legs was wet and throbbing with emptiness. Her muscles virtually quivered with anticipation, and there was a twisting emptiness within her, part hunger, part lust. She tasted blood in her mouth from her elongated canine teeth gnawing her tongue. “All clean,” she purred as she crept over the duvet and pinned her beautiful man to the mattress.
Ethan’s eyes gleamed and his lips were sweetly parted. She saw his tongue tracing over his impeccable white teeth as if he, too, could feel her hunger. Of course, Ethan couldn’t know what it felt like to experience the hunger of the wolf, its demanding, heart-pounding desire, but she thought that maybe tonight they were kindred spirits. She liked to think he sensed her need and shared it.
He reached for her shoulders and pulled her down, crushing her breasts between them. His thumb grazed the side of her cheek and she turned her head so she could take it in her mouth and suck on it. “Christ, Jilly, what did I ever do to deserve you?”
She nibbled his thumb. “You’re a good man, Ethan. The gods reward such men.”
He smiled at her musings like he didn’t quite believe it. He seemed to feel that because his father had been a drunken bastard and his ex-boyfriend an evil dick that he deserved no good thing. He started to protest her words, but she stopped nibbling and crushed her lips against his. She kissed him like she wanted to consume him, crawl inside of him. He returned her kiss hungrily, their tongue entwining. Yes, she thought. He feels the hunger—if not the hunger of a wolf, then at least that of the man.
A little growl issued from her throat and she nipped playfully at his bottom lip.
“Ouch,” he said, not sounding overly concerned as she wrestled his robe off and ran her fingernails up and down his chest, leaving shallow marks. “You’re being quite the alpha tonight.”
“You said I’m quite the alpha every night.”
“You are.”
“Do you want me to slow down?” She really wasn’t the submissive type, and with few exceptions, she enjoyed taking the initiative in her relationships, but for Ethan, she would make the exception. The same had been true of Giovanni.
He wound his fingers through wet strands of her hair and grinned up at her. “Christ, no.”
She laughed at that, stopping only long enough to take his glasses off and set them aside, then she was back at him, kissing and nipping at his lips, sometimes gently, sometimes less so. His hands—callused from working a series of menial jobs during college—slid over her cool, naked skin. She let him mold them over her full breasts and taut belly, then lower down to all the places that ached to be touched and explored by him.
“You’re wet,” he said as he dipped two fingers inside her, testing the waters, so to speak.
She growled and rolled over in the bed, pulling him atop her. She bit the side of his neck hard enough to make him gasp. “So drink me, handsome.”
“Your wish is my command.” He moved stealthily down her body, fluttering kisses along her ribs and the insides of her thighs. The shadow at his chin scratched her delightfully. When he finally reached her core, he used two fingers to part her labia and lick her delicately up and down. Jill moaned and writhed on the sheets, tangled her hands in his hair and pushed his face tighter against her, urging him on, harder, faster.
“Christ, Jilly, how do you make those sounds?” he mumbled against her.
She hadn’t realized she was growling quite so enthusiastically in the deep of her chest or that her voice occasionally ended on a high, quick yipping noise, but she immediately took pains to stop herself. Her wolf was close to the surface tonight, she could feel the great, dark alpha female near. Unfortunately, there were some things even Ethan could never know about her. Not now. Not ever.
His tongue entered her, curling in just such a way that he teased expertly over her g-spot and she felt a marvelous pressure building inside, near the base of her spine. More juices spilled from her, and Ethan lapped then up hungrily, gradually increasing his rhythm and pressure until her back arched and she felt her internal muscle twitch. He brought her right to the edge before easing off.
Frustrated, she raised her h
ead to see why he’d stopped.
He was watching her with cunning, lustful eyes, his chin shining with her juices. “Jilly,” he said, licking his lips, “I want to have a family with you.”
She groaned as her previously amorous mood broke abruptly. “You know I can’t,” she mumbled, sounding angrier than she’d meant to. They’d had the baby talk early on in their relationship, and Jill had explained in no uncertain terms that she was incapable of having children. Not strictly true, but a werewolf’s cycle was vastly different from that of a human female’s. A woman could ovulate and become pregnant once a month for more than half of her lifetime. It was different in the werewolf world. For a werewolf bitch such as herself, it was more like once every one hundred years, and she was only in her mid-sixties now—though of course she didn’t look it. She’d told Ethan a different story, but still, he knew that by staying with her he was sacrificing any chance he’d have of fathering a child. He had agreed to it when they moved in together.
He was still watching her, so she asked the inevitable question: “What are you thinking?”
“We could adopt.” His voice was soft and unsure. “There are kids on the rez that need fostering. I was thinking maybe we should become foster parents.”
She fell back on the pillows. “Where is all this coming from, Ethan?”
He looked reluctant to tell her but finally sighed. “That was Joshie on the phone before and we got to talking.” Joshie was Ethan’s co-associate at the firm, and another Iroquois. “He wants me to stand with him when his wife Tess gives birth next month.”
Jill knew from experience that “standing with your friend” in the Iroquois world meant that Joshie had chosen Ethan to be the Native American equivalent of his son’s godfather. Well, now she knew where all this baby talk was coming from, and, frankly, she was torn.
Her first instinct was to remind Ethan of their agreement, but the hopeful look on his face dashed that idea. Then she thought about telling Ethan that she wasn’t ready, that they weren’t ready for a family, but it had been six years. He wouldn’t buy that excuse. He would know she was stalling, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell him that her world was far too dangerous to bring a human child into it. With packs and pack politics hovering around the edges of her existence, she never knew when some danger might present itself. It was bad enough she was exposing Ethan.