by Deva Long
His fingers pinched. I hissed, “Yes.” His nails emerged as he neared his edge. The lovely pinpoint pain increased. “Yes, Sir.”
Karl thrusts grew more rapid. His fur emerged where he lay on my back, getting thicker and stiffer. His teeth raked my neck. I lay supine in a terrifying position to be in with a man who was turning into a Dire Wolf.
“Grace, oh, Grace,” he boomed. Karl squeezed his claws into my nipple driving conscious thought from my mind, endorphins shooting into my brain. At the same time, he spun my nub like a ship sinking into a whirlpool, driven onward and around by his speeding finger. Waves washed over me, thoughts fled me, and my tenor scream mixed with his bass roar when we both came as one.
fifteen
Afterward, we lay on the floor. He’d rolled on his back while I lolled on my stomach, my hands outstretched above my head. I rubbed the wool under my fingers, my breath returning. Many years ago, a mountain woman wove this rug, inch-by-inch on a loom made of bone and wood. Descending from my own peak, I dug my hands into her labor. I grasped her berries, her grass, her years she’d put into this rug.
I turned my head sideways to look at Karl. He panted softly, his chest rising and falling like ocean waves.
Karl turned his half-wolf head and smiled at me, bright fangs flashing free.
On his belly his sex lay, oozing into the condom.
“This is my favorite song,” he said.
My ears perked up.
I’d seen a dying artist sing the tune on Letterman, but couldn’t place the name.
“Keep me in your heart,” Karl sang sweetly. Tears wet his cheeks.
“Why are you crying?”
“You’re a sweet girl. And I’m a big bad beast.”
“I like you too, Karl and I like that you are a big,” I nudged his lolling cock, “bad beast.”
There remained a question I needed to ask.
“This is our second time.”
“Yes.”
“How many times before a wolf is exclusive?” I flushed.
“Moving pretty fast, Grace,” my corner devil wagged her finger.
“She’s moving too fast not to find this out now.” I bet you guessed who said that.
He looked serious. “We wolves call it bonding. Bonding can happen after two times.”
sixteen
Karl leapt up and disappeared into my bathroom.
I leaned forward, wanting him to come back.
He returned with my bottle of skin cream. Nice stuff, best I can afford. Vitamin E and Aloe. The scent of roses and rainwater. So, it said on the label. West Florida rain always smells like the ocean, but I bet they meant mountain snow-pack fresh spring rain like we used to get in Grand Rapids.
Karl put some on his hands, and rubbed them together to warm the lotion.
He soothed the lotion gently into my red and swollen carpet-tortured breasts.
Karl transported me to heaven with his touch, like an angel he stroked me, taking away the pain. The hurt left me and good feelings rolled through my body. He gently rolled me over, commanding me with his hands. Karl held me on my side, easing lotion into my sore cheeks. He paid special attention to my right one, the one he’d been slapping. I purred. I can do that, I learned from my cat. He chuckled at the sound and kissed the back of my head. All too soon his careful rubbing ceased, and my soothed parts glowed as if bathed in the summer sun.
Karl slid to his feet and reached out his hand to help me up. He sat on the couch and patted next to him.
I guess I can sit on the same cushion with him now.
He stroked his hand over my breast. Over the nipple he’d been pinching, and soothing.
“Grace, I’m sorry. Is this too hard? Too soon?”
I held his hand to my chest. “I didn’t say that.”
“No. I did. It’s too fast for me. It should be too fast for you.”
Oh my god, is he calling me a slut? Does he think I’m a slut?
I don’t know how to act in these scenes!
“I’m not usually like this. I don’t really date men.”
“Your yoga teacher?”
“What?” She never asked. “No, I don’t date women either. I mean, I’m straight.” Mostly. “I just work all the time.” I blew my hair from my forehead, but the damp strands dropped right back into my eyes. “We’re trying to rescue a paper.” He looked surprised. “Leslie and I.”
“Oh right, The Key Times.”
“Yeah, but not just the paper. We provide business websites, SEO consulting, branding, that sort of thing.”
“SEO?”
Fucking A, how did this get so boring so fast.
“Search engine optimization. So you come up first when someone Googles for what you sell.” Great elevator pitch, Grace. Next ask him what his budget is.
He held up his hand. Thankfully.
“Grace, I’d like to see you again. But, we should talk first. I want to make sure you know what you are getting into.” He ran his finger along the side of his mouth, tracing the muscles around his lips.
What? I signed his paperwork!
“Karl, you’re into kinky sex. I know you’re a were-wolf—,”
“Weir,” he groaned. “Please don’t say were.”
Letting that go, I rushed onward, “—I signed your paperwork, I called you Sir, what more do you think you need to tell me?”
“There’s more, trust me and I want you to have time to think.” He ran his fingers through my hair.
“Maybe we should slow down a little.”
“Why do you want to take it slow?”
“When a man and woman make love my way, the act releases powerful chemicals. Endorphins. These can cloud your judgment. I want you to want me, but I don’t want you to want me because of endorphins. I don’t want you to awaken one day and realize you are stuck with a sicko, twisted freak, and not remember how it happened.”
He said one day. In the future. He sees us having a future. Fuck. I’m falling in love. Maybe he’s right.
“But you aren’t a man.”
Karl’s gave me a measuring gaze, “My biology is…complex. I will explain it to you over time, if you give me the time. But, I have my human side. I’m dual-natured, I’m not just a dire wolf wearing a monkey skin. I have endorphins too. I have emotions. Sharper emotions when I’m in my…other state.”
“Wolf emotions,” I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Dire wolves love their mates, Grace, don’t ever think otherwise. We also make decisions quickly. We know the right one when we smell them, in the wild there isn’t much time to sniff around.”
Love. He said love.
seventeen
“Let’s have a real date. Somewhere public. Where you can run away if you want to. Say dinner on the Key. OK?”
“I could do that.”
“Cool. Tonight?”
I sighed. “I have to go to Economy Gear and help Pablo update his website. He’s launching a new beachwear line. I’ll be shooting pictures and video, and live blogging.”
“He needs you there?”
“Yeah. Pablo doesn’t blog.” Great salesman, but he can’t figure out how to switch his computer on.
“We’ll be done around ten.”
Suddenly in my head I saw Karl and I laughing, and singing, and trying to make things work together. Will this choice turn me from my path, or is it the deal that I will forever regret letting go?
“I’ll send my driver to pick you up at ten-oh-one.”
Of course he has a driver.
“Yes, Sir.”
Karl’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared.
“I like when you call me Sir.”
eighteen
About an hour after Karl left, Leslie banged through the front door.
“Well, someone has been having fun,” we both exclaimed at the same time.
My sundress rode up around my waist. Leslie wore her getup from the night before.
Walk of shame, meet walk of
shame.
“So, the date with Mister Morning went well?” I tucked my knees under me and pushed my skirt under them primly.
She collapsed on the couch. “He’s coming around.”
“Coming around to using us or coming around to using you?”
Leslie giggled. “Both!”
She reached over and poked my arm. “So how was your dinner with Mister Norman?”
I blushed.
“I brought up my adoption issues and he felt sorry for me.” I rubbed my face with my palm. “I almost left early.”
I peeked at her through my fingers.
“Then I fucked him and then I ran.”
Leslie sniffed and gave me a suspicious look.
“He called today for another round.”
She smirked. Leslie knows I change my mind often. When I get my way, I usually have second thoughts and try to give anything back that I’ve gotten by being headstrong.
“Why didn’t you just stay with him last night?”
“I ran all the way to the entrance before I…decided to go back. The valet splashed me.” I sighed. “No way could I walk back through the Ritz wearing a soaking wet dress.”
Leslie giggled.
I gave her an evil look, but I couldn’t hold onto my anger very long. Leslie’s laugh infected me and I rolled onto my side heaving, gasping for breath.
“Sorry,” she reached for me and I grabbed her hand, my knuckles going white while I struggled for control. “Funny story!”
“Then, today he came by…”
“And that’s why you’re sitting here pulling a Marilyn.”
I tucked my hem farther under my legs.
“Did you do him again?”
I nodded. “But then things turned weird again. He’s complicated.”
“What do you mean?” Her brows dove for her nose. “What did he do?”
“He told me he was bad news.” I sniffed.
“You like him like him?”
“Yeah, but he’s different. Maybe that’s why I like him.”
“Of course he is. He’s rich. ‘The rich are different’.”
She gazed my way from under her mass of hair. “So do you have another date?”
“Tonight.”
Her mouth dropped open and her eyebrows ran up under her hair away from the sudden look in her eye.
“Tonight, no. Honey, you can’t cancel on Pablo.”
“What about you, Leslie. You know you can work a tablet. Live blogging is not that complicated.” I was being evil. She texted me earlier to tell me she had another date with Caden Morning.
I had sent back, “fine.”
She shook her finger at me.
“Don’t mess with me girl. You will not like the consequences.”
We know each other too well.
“Stop freaking out. My date’s dinner after Pablo’s. Don’t worry, I won’t leave the boardman hanging.”
“Just don’t call him the boring man again.” Uncontrollable laughter bubbled again. When we were college girls trying to close Sleepy Key Gear as our first client bigger than the campus newspaper, I’d referred to Pablo as the boring man at a meeting. I thought he’d left the conference room to check on a customer, but he’d been standing right behind me.
Grace saved the moment by shrieking, “Boardman! Great tagline, Grace.”
Pablo bought the dodge, and we ran our first paid ad campaign ever presenting him as the Sleepy Key boardman. The line didn’t catch on, but he’d liked us and stuck with us while we figured how to transfer the academic theories about marketing and branding we’d learned in college to real life.
“I told you, now you tell me about Caden Morning.”
Her eyelids dropped and she peeked at me through her long lashes.
“Mr. Morning done me good.” She ran her hand through her hair and sighed. “He’s kinky, in an interesting way.”
Leslie blushed.
She never blushes.
“And he wore me out. I’ve got to rest before my date with him tonight. He’s one that I have to be on my guard for. I need my…” She gazed sideways at me, “beauty sleep.”
“JeSUS, unfair, Leslie you have to tell me more.”
She waved her palm.
“Not today, babe, sorry. Don’t want to jinx it.” She bounced up and darted into her room, red heels flashing, leaving the faint scent of a sexy night in her wake.
Seconds later I heard her shower start.
I sat there breathing hard. She could make me furious. Leslie lived like Karl: she had to have her way and control those around her.
Even so, I still love her.
Maybe that says something about me. I don’t want to go there now and now it’s after six, just time to wash and get over to Pablo’s.
nineteen
Live blogging can be fun. Our company, Styles and Grace, had done a decent job promoting the launch of Pablo’s new line, which he called without a lot of originality, Sleepy Dude Shorts. Inside joke: the line has very few men’s items, the catalog’s mostly bikinis. Or rather cloth bits that might just cover your parts.
Pablo’s mostly hired skinny girls for sales clerks. They sported different items from the swimwear line, except for Amy. She dealt with the same problem as me: a normal appetite and metabolism. She and I worked the cameras, taking pictures of the beach bunnies wearing the different pieces, and the men trying to look at the girls without looking like they were looking.
I used the new wireless camera that Pablo just bought because the ingenious device could upload directly to our blog. Of course Pablo had no idea how to work it.
After some messing with network settings and passwords, I could shoot video, edit, and blog all from the palm sized camera.
I enjoyed learning to use the new toy, until I pointed the lens at the crowd by the entrance and there stood Karl’s fuzzy head. Well not fuzzy really, more like strands of sunlight woven from mountain air, but who was counting every filament in every curl on his head?
Other than me.
“Grace, get the camera out your face, and say hello to our famous guests.” Pablo twinkled.
“The pirate slayers!”
“Hello Grace.” Karl’s eyes widened, amused.
Shit. The last thing I wanted to do is get all googley eyed in front of Pablo. He’s very nosy and protective, and would unleash the full on inquisition if he suspected I had a dinner date after the show.
I lowered my camera. “Good to see you again, Mr. Norman.” I put the Canon back in front of my eyes, “thanks again for saving me.”
That shocked Pablo. Karl gave me a knowing smile. Jack seemed too busy chatting up one of the models to notice me.
Or maybe he forgot who I am.
A few minutes later Pablo walked up to me. “I thought you’d want to spend some more time with that guy. He winked. “He likes you.”
I waved my hand as if brushing away flies. “Oh you know me and men, Pablo, either I’m not good enough, or they aren’t.”
“Someday, you have to be less picky. You’ll end up all alone.” He made the face he makes when a customer tries to back out of sale, like the sad dwarf in Snow White. Weepy. “Like me.”
I gave him a hug. “Oh Pablo, you’ll find the right one soon. You’re the Boardman, after all.”
He beamed at his favorite tagline.
“I will, someday, and so will you, chica.” He pulled out his huge phone, which is practically a tablet. The ones people look crazy talking into. “How are we doing?” He hands me his oversized device.
I’ve showed him a hundred times how to see the web stats. I made him a multi-colored bar chart, updated every minute, and put an app to launch the chart on his start screen. He still needs me to work it.
I poke the icon and the graphs rendered on the screen. “The blue line is going up. That’s hits. The green line below shows conversions.”
Pablo looked confused.
“Sales.” He knows that word, and he beams. “So,
people are watching your blog and buying things from the website?”
Another thing I’ve told him a hundred times. Search engines love good content, information, videos, and pictures. Despite all the emails from experts saying they have the latest tricks to get you to the top of Google mountain, the main thing is the depth of information about what you’re selling. So, I created pages of information on beachwear, how to wash it, what its sun protection factor is. Pages and videos showing how to surf and paddleboard and the site came up high in search results, which in turn sold stuff from the website. Pablo’s still amazed that people buy things without touching them first. Heck, sometimes I’m also amazed. When I first used the internet, Facebook limited itself to college students. It seems like a million years ago, not ten.
“Awesome,” he says like the surfer he still is. Then, Pablo’s eye glinted. Like he was hungry. Starving. Staring past me. “Customers. Gotta go, Grace,” and he was off on the hunt. I heard him mutter, “Gotta get more salespeople on the floor.” Pablo made a bee line for the flower shirted men wandering through the door and making goggle-eyes at the bikini models.
A high pitched laugh echoed from the checkout counter.
Karl Norman had just dropped a shopping basket full of stuff beside the register, and Jennifer, one of the more annoying thing-wearing skinny girls was about to ring him up.
twenty
All through high-school, I worked as a checkout girl. I put down the Canon and rushed to the cash register. I used some muscles I must have built by paddleboarding and with my extra padding that I made from wine and cheese, managed to hip-check Jennifer.
“Pablo wants you.” I spoke louder than I needed to.
“Excuse me?”
“At the front. He just texted me.” I showed her my iPhone. My text app always showed lots of little green bubbles from Pablo. Mainly ideas for what we could be doing to increase his sales. Jennifer blinked her long lashes at the phone. I made sure my hand shook so she couldn’t read the words, just see his face on the ‘from’ screen.
“OK, but what about him.”