Bears of Burden: THORN

by Candace Ayers

  "So you eat meat and live alone," Kira mentioned as she took another tentative sip off the top of her beer. "What else do I need to know to be a successful werewolf?"

  "The only time you should ever need to shift completely is during a full moon." She watched her professor's broad-shouldered figure move about the kitchen industriously, and felt a tightening in her stomach that had nothing to do with how empty it was. Maybe it was the effects of the alcohol already hitting her, but she was suddenly aware of how intimate their current situation was. There had to be a dozen rules against this sort of thing, and they were breaking all of them. Her fingers clenched over the cold bottle as she forced herself to concentrate on his answer.

  "It's compulsive," he continued. "The longer you put it off, the more painful the change will be when it comes upon you anyway. It's better if you just let it happen. Get plenty of sleep, plan your schedule ahead of time, and make sure you're somewhere secluded. Once you figure out a location, it's better if you cache clothes around, too, in case something happens to the ones you're wearing."

  "You sound as if you know from experience," Kira said. Mainly she just wanted to get his attention, and she succeeded; Professor Donovan turned to fix her with smoldering gray eyes, and it was impossible not to smile at the embarrassing memories she could clearly see playing out behind them.

  "Laugh it up, Bentley. My experience is your hard-won lesson already learned for you," he said with a mock bow. Some of his beer sloshed onto the floor, which only made it harder for her to suppress her laughter at his expense. It was her first time in recent memory that Kira could actually remember enjoying herself, and it was all because of a man she had thought she hated. She slid from her stool and tore a paper towel from the roll to help him mop up the spill. As she bent to her task, a sudden thought occurred to her that immediately sobered her mood.

  "Will I… will I be aware when I do? Will I be myself?"

  It scared her just to ask the question. After a long, silent moment, Professor Donovan set his beer aside and bent down beside her. Kira had stopped cleaning the floor without realizing, and his fingers gently extracted the paper towel from her hand.

  "There's the possibility that you'll blackout."

  Kira raised her eyes from the floor, and noticed tired lines cutting across his face that hadn't been there a minute ago. He was staring off into the middle distance; he didn't appear to realize he was even in the same room as her anymore. A moment later, his gaze cut back to hers, and she was startled by the ferociousness of his expression. "But you don't need to worry about a thing. I'll be there with you your first time, and any time after that, if you want. You don't have to go through this on your own."

  "Thank you, Sawyer," she whispered.

  It was like her gratitude—or was it the use of his first name?—jolted through the man like electricity. He moved to stand, and Kira grabbed the front of his shirt without thinking. Rather than stay down, the man carried them both to their feet. The swiftness of the move made her dizzy—was she really buzzed already on half a bottle of beer? His own hand came up to grasp her fingers and work them free, which was fine; the moment they came loose, she clutched his hand instead.

  "Why are you doing this?" she asked in an unsteady voice. Donovan glanced away from her, as if he had some pressing business to attend to on the stove, even though he had already finished and set aside their meal moment ago. "Why are you really helping me?"

  "Don't ask stupid questions, Bentley." His larger fingers worked to free themselves from hers, but she held to him fast. "I know that as your teacher, I'm supposed to tell you there are no stupid questions, but you've just proved academia wrong by finding one."

  "Why is it stupid?" she demanded. "Everything has only gotten more confusing since I met you!" She felt the hand trying to escape hers suddenly tighten, and her heart sped up. "And why can't you call me Kira? Is it because you have feelings for me? Because I—"

  "You're confused," Professor Donovan interjected heatedly. "You said so yourself. I've put myself in a position to guide you because I've been in your shoes, but that's all I can do… that's all I can be."

  "But when I kissed you," she whispered, eyes desperately searching his in the low light of the kitchen. "When you kissed me back—"

  Professor Donovan groaned, and for a wild moment, Kira thought he would pull her to him. He didn't need to speak the words; his response to the memory was confirmation enough. All he needed to do now was take her, the way they both knew he wanted to, and…

  "Bentley, do you remember your assessment of Jane Eyre?"

  Kira blinked. "My what?"

  Donovan's hand, the one that wasn't holding hers to his chest, reached forward to tuck a strand of blond hair back behind her ear. His touch was gone before she even knew it was there.

  "On Rochester and Jane," he intoned quietly.

  The moment in class came crashing back to her, and suddenly Kira knew what he would say—how he would use her own words against her.

  She didn't wait for the rejection to come. She wrenched her hand free, and moved back around to the other side of the bar without looking at him. Her face burned in humiliation. She had been confused about where they stood since their kiss that morning, but now the line had been drawn—it was the same line she had drawn herself, by pointing out the impossibility of a romance when there was already a preexisting power imbalance.

  Kira dropped her head into her hands as Sawyer Donovan—her professor—finished preparing dinner.

  This was why it never paid to go to English class.

  CHAPTER 9

  The week passed without further incident.

  Sawyer Donovan was beginning to qualify incidents as anything involved Kira Bentley outside of the classroom. She was on-time to his lectures every day, and from a carefully-maintained vantage behind his desk, he could see that she was beginning to look much healthier. Her blond hair looked fuller and glossier; her skin luminous; her lips…

  But that was a dangerous path to go down. All he needed to content himself with was the knowledge that had taken his dietary advice to heart, and that she was now subsisting on food beneficial to a wolf's appetite. He wanted to ask her how she was progressing himself, but she appeared to be avoiding him—she had taken to striking up conversations with her neighbors after the clock struck the hour, or gliding past his desk when he was preoccupied with another student.

  Their distance was for the best, but it still irked him. It more than irked him. It drove Sawyer Donovan absolutely insane to be so near her, and yet so necessarily removed. There were times he spoke to the class that he was only aware of her presence, of her eyes, on him. It was enough to make him wish he had let that staggering confession slip past her lips in his kitchen. Did it still linger there beside the taste of his kiss, or had she moved on? Had she taken his advice and let her unspoken feelings for him burn themselves out?

  Walking past her desk when everyone else's head was bent to their reading was sheer agony, but he had to do it. He slid her graded assignment back to her, purposefully disrupting her line of sight, before moving on. When she overturned it to read his 'additional notes', she would find his true message:

  Gosling Park. Sundown. Full moon tonight.

  She wouldn't be able to ignore or mistake his meaning. He knew she felt it as strongly as he did: the tidal pull in her blood, the heightened senses, the raw and itching skin that yearned to be split wide open so that the pure and feral form beneath it could emerge. She would meet him there, he had no doubt.

  And then… what? They would resume their unlikely relationship? Kira had been right to call him out. Her instincts about Donovan's own feelings did her credit, and his dismissal had caused her to doubt herself at a time when he should have been helping her build confidence. It was a necessary evil, he knew, but that didn't make him feel any less the villain. He had already damned himself with a kiss.

  He had determined that Gosling Park was a halfway point between his apa
rtment and the campus dormitories, and within easy walking distance of both. He had changed here a time or two, and knew it to be forested and fairly secluded—a lack of play structures or paved paths meant that it was rarely frequented, and even the park rangers charged with maintenance didn't appear to see the point. There was a duck pond on the property that a migrating flock of geese had taken to calling a temporary home; their enduring presence, year after year, gave the park its namesake.

  He stood on the park lawn now, a breeze ruffling his windbreaker, and watched the figure slowly making her way toward him. She carried a duffle bag—good. It appeared she had been listening to him that night at his apartment despite the enormous elephant in the room.

  "We'll go into the woods here. About five minutes," he said as he turned and started walking. A few more strides and Kira fell into step beside him. "There's a glade that the moon hits just right."

  "What happens when the moon hits just right?" she asked as they passed the outer trees and lost themselves in the woods.

  "Everything gets a lot easier," Donovan responded.

  They found the glade right where he had left it, although he would spare her his cringe-worthy joke. The night around them was silent, as if every living thing was holding its breath. The sun was down now completely, and the moon was rising over the canopy of the trees.

  Donovan stripped his jacket off as Kira dropped her duffle bag. "Stash it," he said without looking. "Anywhere that's easily accessible, but that someone out walking around won't readily find. A bush will work."

  "Do we…?" The girl trailed off as Donovan pulled his shirt over his head without a second thought. "Are we just… getting naked, then?"

  "Unless you want your clothes ruined." He turned back around, and her eyes cut away from him quickly as she grabbed up her duffle bag. "Feeling shy?" he called after her as she disappeared behind a tree. "That's not the Bentley I know!"

  "I hate you!" she shouted over her shoulder.

  "We both know that's not true," Donovan murmured below his breath. The thirsting question of whether or not Kira still had feelings for him had been satisfied. There was no light out save for the moon, and she could still barely bring herself to look at him. Then again, maybe that had something to do with the fact that he was half-naked.

  Donovan pushed his jeans off his hips until he stood fully naked in the middle of the clearing save for his boxers. He let the gentle moonlight filter down from the night sky and spill like milk across his bare skin. He could feel its pull on him much more strongly now. Something else pulled at his awareness, though, and he returned his attention to the tree that Kira had disappeared behind. She moved out slowly from behind it, and his breath caught at what he saw.

  Kira had successfully concealed herself behind one of the taller bushes, but there was no disguising the fact that her shoulders were bare. His eyes traveled downward helplessly, but the rest of her remained hidden. He saw her clutch her shoulders against the cold and knew her arms were crossed.

  "What now?" she called from across the clearing. "Do I go first?"

  "Do you feel it?" Donovan asked her. He saw her nod of confirmation. "Then we go together on my count. Ready?"

  "No," she moaned woefully.

  "Three… two…"

  The one was swallowed back down into his throat as his vocal cords stretched and shrank. His skin shivered beneath the moon, and dark fur erupted down his arms and sprang up along his chest. He eased out of his boxers as he fell to all fours, shaking himself to dispense what remained of his clothing. The change, abetted by exposure to the moon, was seamless; it was over in less than a minute. Donovan turned his lupine head and gazed down his snout in the direction that Kira had disappeared. Maybe he should have let her go first. If anything went wrong with her own change, he wouldn't be able to shift back to help…

  But his innumerable worries were put to rest when the bush rustled, and a tentative foreleg stepped out into the moonlight, eventually carrying the rest of a she-wolf into view with it. He could tell by her all-too-human hesitancy that Kira was completely in her right mind, if a little disoriented by finding herself inhabiting a new body. Like her human counterpart, the wolf was sleek and beautiful; had Donovan a canine's predilections, he was certain he would have pursued her to the ends of the earth and carved his teeth into every rival he met along the way.

  He waved his tail like a playful flag in greeting, and the she-wolf raised her head from where she held it sunk between her shoulders. Her body language was all wrong for a wolf, but he could see that she was coming around. He feinted left, then right, then shot off across the glade. He heard clumsy feet beginning to pick up the pace as she followed him, and soon they were running, side-by-side, through the midnight trees.

  They ran for what felt like miles, doubling back frequently when the forested terrain of the park threatened to run out. Donovan took them along all of his favorite routes, and even branched out to find a new one—they skirted the pond, deliberately loping past the slumbering geese until they had all of the birds flapping in a whirlwind of feathers and honks as they rushed for the safety of the water. Donovan wanted to throw his head back and howl—something he had never dared do before—and he knew Kira would join in with him if he did. But he couldn't give over to his joy, no matter how much fun they were having. It had to come to an end.

  They made their way back to the clearing hours later after having run the better part of the night into the ground beneath their paws. Donovan was already shifting himself upright out of habit; he grabbed hold of a tree before propelling himself into the glade proper, his exhausted wolf's pants giving over to peels of deep human laughter.

  "That was—"

  He turned back around to find Kira standing upright behind him, her long, bare legs twined together mid-step. She froze when she saw him looking, but Donovan wasn't faring much better. He was absolutely riveted by the sight of her. Though the shadows from the shifting trees above climbed her bare body like clutching, modest fingers, there was no hiding her womanly nakedness from him. He could see every curve, every dip and swell—everything he had felt beneath him for that fleeting moment in his office, now laid bare.

  As she stepped into the glade, the moon hit her.

  Just right.

  CHAPTER 10

  For a moment, Kira thought she had done something wrong. The way that Donovan was looking at her made her nervous that she had. Were her bones set right? Was a part of her still hairy? Oh God, had she forgotten to shave her legs?

  Her professor advanced toward her, and her pulse kicked into overdrive. The way he moved… there was still so much of the wolf in him it nearly left her breathless. All that coiled power, that predatory stalk, that unleashed heat in his gaze…

  He kept walking as if he perceived no obstacle in his path, and Kira retreated out of necessity. She wanted to protest how overassertive he was being, but she couldn't find the words. She fell back another step, and then another, until a final stride from Sawyer Donovan carried her back up against the trunk of a tree and plunged them both in shadows. There was no light to illuminate their transgression as his mouth collided with hers.

  Her body reacted to him instantly without her mind's consent. She was confused, flustered, and maybe even a little angry that he was doing this to her now after his rejection of her feelings, but her body… her body cast itself toward the burning heat of his. She came unmoored from the tree, and Sawyer's hand gripped her flank possessively and shoved her back into it. His hard, naked body pinned her between her legs, and Kira scarcely felt the abrasive bark of the tree digging into her back then; her thoughts were completely wiped out, and she felt numb to everything save the intensity of his kiss and the thrill of their joining.

  After the build-up of all that tension this past week, the release felt extraordinary. His hands burned imprints into her wherever he touched; his tongue pushed its way into her mouth and swept against hers until he had her panting and moaning against him with m
ounting need. He must have imagined this moment playing out between them at least as often as she had, and now there was nothing to keep them apart them—no desk, no classroom, no student-teacher restrictions, no clothing…

  "Kira," Sawyer panted her name as he drew back. She moved her head to pursue him, wanting his lips on hers again, but he kept her pinned firmly against the tree. "Kira. There's something I have to tell you."

  "Please, Sawyer," she begged. She didn't even know what she was pleading with him for. She watched his eyes fall to her exposed neck, to the bite mark that had scarred but never completely healed. The expression that passed across his face then was enough to silence her. She had never seen a man in so much pain.

  "I did this to you," he said tersely. "It was me, Kira. I'm the one that bit you."

  The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

  Granted, Donovan should have stopped himself moments before, the minute he saw Kira Bentley's glistening naked figure and the notion came into his head to do something about it. Now, hindsight couldn't help him: he had the young woman, his student, wedged beneath his own naked body, and his desire for her was in rigid evidence. She gazed back at him with eyes that he would have likened to a doe's had he not known her to be otherwise. Her own arousal was apparent in her expanded pupils; her ragged breathing; her plump lips reddened from the fervor of their kissing.

  But her breathless expression was rapidly changing. Confusion, as he watched her brow knit, then horrified understanding passed across her beautiful face, and as Donovan watched her, he felt as if his heart could break. His own pain in that moment was nothing compared to hers, he knew—after all they had been through together, and all the help he had offered… he was the shadow that chased her in her nightmares, the phantom whose slip in self-control had doomed her to at least half an animal's existence. He gripped her bare shoulders, eyes desperately searching hers. He should never have let his feelings for her escalate; now that they had, he had to tell her.