ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories)

by Hawke, Jessa

  We continued that way for so long that I lost track of the days, weeks, months, and feelings. It was all a nasty tumbled jungle inside of me, and every time I came into his mouth or ass, I’d be filled with the disgusting type of self-loathing you only get when you debase yourself and you like it. But there were so many avenues to explore, so many more things I wanted to try, and none of it was during a time in my life that made any sense, if any such times exist at all.

  Santa Maria’s Festival always fell on the hottest day of the summer, the kind that made thighs stick to vinyl and leather seats, and always closed down an entire avenue of the old neighborhood. I drove my dad’s old auto back then, and there were always girls around. It was difficult for the Italiano girls to give me the time of day after all the rumors they had spread, but there were always pink-faced Irish girls who liked to hang out on the fringes of the festival, glorying in the bright string lights and exotic smells of basil and tomatoes and frying meat. They were like cotton candy to me, too sweet and vapid and cloying, and they always talked too much. Besides, back then I was still painfully thin, and few developed a taste for me beside the macho ideal of the day.

  Except for that summer that Molly O’Neil picked me up. I was off to the side of the street, leaning against my car, observing bitterly and avoiding locking eyes with anyone in particular. And suddenly there was this girl, gritty and real beside me, all her imperfections adding up to make her less of a dream and more an actual, corporeal person next to me. She had stringy blonde hair, blue eyes and ginger freckles; her blue polka-dotted dress outlined a thick waist, straps firmly set on narrow shoulders. Her skin had the quality of farmer’s cheese, lightly marbled with blue veins beneath its vague translucence.

  Let’s drive, she said, and got right into my car.

  Her breasts were large and substantial, with pink lemonade nipples that were just a little sour to the taste. The smell of her was slightly spicy, and her thighs were wavy as I pressed her into the car seat. She unbuckled me herself and sucked on my neck, bruising me; when she pushed my pants down my narrow little hips, I was already stiff and hot against the balmy night air. All I could think about were those chapped lips with traces of raspberry lipstick eaten off as she consumed Italian sausage over the course of the evening, and how none of the girls I had grown up with would have ever gotten into this car with me. They were all church-righteous, but snuck off into the alleyways during the Santa Maria festival to be done in the ass by boys like Tony and his gang.

  Because if it’s in that hole, they argued, it doesn’t count, right? You could still be a virgin, even if every guy in the neighborhood knew what your hindquarters looked like nude.

  I groaned and spilled sticky semen onto Molly’s thighs, the folds of her blue dress and white petticoat bunching up around her middle. Her white underpants ringed in pink swirls stretched between her ankles, and she moved to the side to light up a cigarette. I collapsed next to her on my nothing butt and lit it for her. Neither of us said a word as we sat side by side, the tarantella playing somewhere deep in the background.

  Eventually, she pulled her underwear up around her hips, snapping the elastic band in place. Her hair was more matted than before, the pinkness of her plump arms deepening as she clutched her purse to her side. I drove her back to the outskirts of where the Irish families lived, that vague border between our community and theirs, and stepped out of the car to open the door for her. It was at that moment that Tony Fiuconelli rounded the corner.

  He was with his girlfriend, a dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian, because he didn’t he deserve her? Nobody knew about us, about the times we would sneak away into my room or behind the church, or even to our favorite place underneath the bleachers. Surely, that tiny thing grasping his arm as he set eyes upon me and Molly had no idea that muscled Tony Fiuconelli liked to bend me over and spread my ass cheeks with his cock, tunneling into me so that he could lose himself to the world, over and over again.

  Molly kissed my cheek lightly before sauntering off slowly into the poorly-lit block on which she lived. Tony’s eyes on it burned more than her lips had; his girlfriend yanked his arm because he was staring at me, eyes burrowing into mine in a moment of uncharacteristically public feelings for the two of us. The beatings had narrowed down to isolated moments over the years, although sometimes, he liked to slap me around before or after we were done together. He was too busy now to see me much, anyway, seeing as he was helping his uncle borrow car parts. But he still came to me. The look in his eyes as he watched Molly kiss me said everything, and much more than what the girl watching us could ever voice aloud.

  I guess he’s not as much a boy-diddler as we thought, she said, steering Tony back towards the faint lights of the festival.

  That was the last time. I half-expected to receive a beating for my betrayal, but he just let me be. We were older then, and I was well on my way to a more respectable, quietly masculine career. I wonder often, staring at my reflection in the closet mirror, who he sees now. They say his wife has marks around her neck. Love taps.

  Time passes quietly in this respectable job, and so I let my imagination take me far outside this place. I found time to wonder what Valentina’s first time with Santiago was like. I heard the marriage was arranged between their fathers, as these things go, that they saw each other only briefly before the wedding was conducted. It was a power match; the women in Valentina’s family were all matriarchs in their own secret right, and Santiago’s father was Don in our neighborhood, which spanned to the outskirts of the Italian streets and oftentimes intermingled with the Irish and Spanish sectors. So what if Valentina spoke no English? Santiago did not plan on having his wife do much except run the house and open up her warm cunny to him at nights.

  Valentina, Valentina. When I first met her, she was still that girl from the old world, the one where she joined her mother in plucking olives from their trees, and was no stranger to hard labor. Whoever scoffed at women’s work never did what women do, never pounded and processed flour into thin strips of pasta, never stirred minestrone in vats to feed dozens of hungry men at any time of day or night. Valentina grew up around animals, horses and chickens, and pigs, and so she was wise in the ways of the farm, and wise in the ways of what it is that goes on between the males and females. She caught the bitch with the stud, howling and panting slightly, and so she knew to expect dominance, but never pleasure. It would only be years from then that Santiago’s use of her body would bring the vague stirrings of something lush just out of reach, and it took her all of those years to settle into the full meaning of the nature of her bountiful breasts, hips, and thighs. To understand why the low curve of her ass in tight skirts could cause men to follow her with their eyes, even after they learned of who she was. And that these thoughts, unclean as they are, pertain to men—and even women—everywhere, that eyes could be on her body regardless of the ethnic heritage of the onlooker in question.

  That first night. Santiago her senior by ten years, encountering her in her silk negligee as she stood, apprehensive and waiting in front of him after she was stripped of her wedding lace. Nothing but an untouched woman. He slid one strap down her tanned shoulder, skin like satin, then the other. Her appetizing breasts were bared to the world, which was then narrowed to only her point of view. They were more areola than breast, and when Santiago bent his head to suck on them, she wanted to tilt her head back, to experience the tugging sensations with her eyes closed, but couldn’t. Good girls were not supposed to enjoy this, not supposed to feel hot under their husband’s blue-eyed gaze. And so she let him spread her fingers with his and clasp her hand; she followed him when he lead her over to the chair. There was an uncomfortable wetness between her legs when he undressed her. He did not bother taking off all his clothes, just opened the zipper on his pants enough to let his member spring free. She had seen the one on the horse—it was huge, but she supposed Santiago’s was the right size for a man. She was nude, the healthy fleshy curves of her body
, thighs whiter than the rest of her, and he took her by the hand and made her straddle him. He hurt when he pushed inside of her, and she tried not to squeeze his fingers too tightly. None of it made sense anyway, she realized in Italian, as she began to move on him through the pain, the sting of which was fast passing. Her luscious woman’s body, but her little girl uncertainty; her farm child’s precociousness, but her virgin’s timidity. As he shuddered inside of her and squeezed those intense eyes shut, Valentina realized that while she could not yet speak her husband’s language, perhaps she did hold some small measure of power over him as a person.

  It would take the span of many years to learn just how much power she could wield, with her mind as much as her body. When I first met the Rufinos, Valentina was still just a woman in body, but a child in the mind. She had learned enough English to talk jewelry and alcohol, and Santiago knew the bare stretches of Italian that would let him communicate with her; they were still in the master-and-sex-kitten relationship then. Part of me admires the journey Valentina would go through, becoming an equal partner in our business, refusing to be cheated out of a single cent of what belonged to her, even though she was a woman, and a foreigner at that.

  The business was simple, really, and part of me always remembers, for some odd reason, Molly. I knew bankers from banks that had little to no association with the ones that belonged to our extended community, and every so often, we’d all skim a little bit off the top and transfer that over to a Swiss bank account. It was a regular course of action in those days, except for the fact that the Rufinos and I would always find a way to skim a little more, to dig a little deeper, and transfer part of it over to funnel into our own pockets rather than that of the community.

  They never knew the machinations of my mind, though. I never told them that through the years, the relationship I developed with them in my mind was always rich and that I knew them both separately, together, and often better than they knew themselves. I never went back to Italy, but whenever we ran another deal together, I always imagined us making a pact, with words unspoken, that part of the money would be wired to a Swiss bank account, where I would invest and manage it until we had saved up enough to buy a rustic little villa in Toscana, where we could eat rich food and live together, the three of us, far away from prying eyes and machismo standards.

  Valentina lines the pan with rippled sheets of lasagna, spreading blood-red sauce peppered with the green of spices in a kitchen that is lit by golden light. I approach her from behind, and yank open the ties of her cream=colored apron, and press her sharply against my body, knowing that she is squeezing her eyes shut at the feel of me. I reach around to catch one of her plump breasts in my hands and knead it like dough, and when I press her body into the flour, bent at the waist and spread through the legs, the Italian that comes from her mouth means that she cannot contain herself, that I have brought her back to a place that is so elemental that she cannot remember anything but her mother tongue.

  In my mind, I am their darling, noticed, finally, for the first time. When Santiago comes in at the end of the day, I gently remove his clothing, piece by piece, releasing the musky male scent of him into the air. I run the water in our free-standing tub, and I lead him by the hand into it, and hold his hand as he lowers down into the water. I soap his back and chest and feel him unkink beneath my hands. Valentina enters with a towel and we dry him off, and then it is my turn. Santiago gets in behind me, and I close my eyes as his hands rub my chest, squeezing soapy water over my nipples, washing me everywhere. Valentina reaches into the water, dark eyes warm and nurturing, and cups my balls in the water, rubbing gently into my peritoneum until I am ramrod stiff in the water, but not unpleasantly so.

  Later, we are by the four poster bed in the bedroom. It is light and airy and luxurious, the best our money can buy. I stand in front of the bed and I am wholly naked, but I do not feel, for the first time in my life, too skinny, too hairy or hairless or strange. Santiago kisses my neck and shoulders, and Valentina takes me into her pink-lipped mouth. I can feel the blue intensity of Santiago as he nips at the skin on my neck and drags his roughened fingertips over the sensitive nubs of my nipples, and I can see the low arch of Valentina’s back as it curves out into her big white ass, the dark curl of her hair stark against the whiteness of her skin.

  Santiago takes over her mouth first with his hands, then with his own tongue, and Valentina sits on the big pink loveseat, watching us, reaching down with both hands to find her own pleasure spot, her long, loping breasts squeezed between her arms. It is here that she can finally tilt her head back and find herself in the foreignness of her voice; she can stain that loveseat with her own juices and finally feel no shame for what she can master by the skill of her own hands. It is in the dying light that permeates that bedroom in the secret hills of Tuscany that Santiago can dig one finger into my ass as he sucks me dry, and there needs to be no agony in his eyes anymore. I can deliver them both. And in the mirror, I can finally see my reflection and know that deliverance without pain is possible for me, too. Whether or not I want it is a separate question for a separate story.

  They are coming now, to secure our latest deal, to discuss how to reap the rewards of deceit. They know nothing of my mind, of my dreams for us.

  To them, I am, after all, only the banker.

  THE END

  Bad to the Bone

  They call me the girl who runs with the wolves. I was discovered on the banks of the river, swaddled in a scratchy wool blanket and near death. I was hidden in a bank of river rushes, tall green grass that obscured me almost completely. How I was found, I will never know. Anyone else would have just assumed me dead or passed over the dark secret of my abandonment without giving me a second glance. The old woman who found me was regarded as the hill witch; she scooped me in her arms and took me to the cabin where two little boys, no older than two years old, suckled milk from a worn, but clean bottle in a corner of the kitchen.

  I was nothing more than a mewling blanket by the time the witch got the goat’s milk warmed up. It was an old goat, and gentle, and the milk it produced was what kept me alive, even if at first, I refused to drink. The long Roman nose of the hill witch tickled my chin, and her unruly tendrils of hair made me sneeze. It was a long time that night before she could make my mouth close around the nipple of the bottle. When I finally managed to tighten my small mouth around it, I coughed and almost spit up the milk.

  She put me in a nest of blankets, this creature that looked like no sex known to mankind. I was not even strong enough to squirm away from the cold, so she tucked me in. Less than a quarter of an hour had passed before one of the dozens of critters she kept around the house crept up to me, sniffing at the odd river smell that came from me, that still comes from me. Even now, whoever comes near me claims I smell like water, like tall rushes and like petrichor, the mustiness on the air after a long-awaited rain. After the critters, who as the days grew into weeks, I learned to grasp by their wriggly little bodies with my hands, not fearing their long, sharp teeth, came the two boys who lived with the hill witch. They had no names, then, because the hill witch believed that every living creature should chose its own.

  It was a long time before I regained my strength, and I never did become one of those happy, round infants that are always so popular. I grew up thinking maybe if I had been, my parents might have kept me. I was a skinny baby, pale with black hair and eyes that seemed to swallow the world. The boys took a while to approach me; they were mistrustful even then, and a baby who took up the hill witch’s time was not a welcome addition to the household.

  They smelled me at first, as all wild creatures do when confronted with something new. Maybe they learned their lesson from the house animals. Orion, as he would later name himself after the constellation, for the stars meant everything to him, poked at me with his fingers and poked one in my mouth. When I bit him, he let out a small howl and yanked his hand back, eyeing my mouth warily. Enoch, calling himself as a
bastardization of the night, his favorite time because that is when the moon came out, tried to taste me; I grabbed hold of his tongue and squeezed with all my might. He growled and nipped at my hand, drawing the slightest amount of blood, and now he had the taste of me forever. Nobody told me that all of this was strange, that this is not how they did it in normal houses. But we were not in a normal house.

  There was nothing normal in the hill witch’s house, where the tomatoes grew fat and lush, but useless roses withered and drooped because the hill witch had no use for them. She ate only what she grew and she grew everything she ate. She carried a long walking stick, although when she was in the yard amongst the high-growing cucumber vines, she never seemed to need it, just like she never needed any gloves when she plucked the thorny, dark green vegetables from the vines they were so reluctant to leave. She never bled, not once when I knew her.

  I chose my own name, Levana, on my sixth birthday, as children are wont to do. I wanted to be close to the moon myself, so I chose the ancient Hebraic version of it, and repeated into the night sky six times at the stroke of midnight, one for every year I had been born. It was true that we did not know when I was born, because I was a found child, but everyone in the house celebrated the same birthday. Celebration might be too grand a word; the only attention the hill witch ever gave the occasion was to mark our heights in the doorframe with her knife, an ancient thing as gnarled as she was, at least at first glance.

  The hill witch herself had no age; nobody knew, in fact, how long she had lived up in that cabin. It was almost queenly, where she had situated herself. She lived in a house up on a hill, down the road from the old steel mill. Not far from the cliffs where seabirds build their nests was her house where the townsfolk would sometimes bring their requests. She lived on the fringe of the town in a hill hidden partially by the oldest redwoods known to that part of the country; it was a long and arduous climb up, and even then, you would only hit your nose upon her massive garden, gated in and guarded by thorns. She never adopted any more children after she found me; I was the last, she always said, and three was a good number in any case. She mumbled something once in a while about some prophecy or other, but if I ever questioned her about it, she would grumble and walk away, leaning heavily on her stick.