by Allison Moon
Below Lexie’s feet were rubber mats that made each step spring. She had a flash of running through the woods with Archer, pine needles springing beneath each paw step.
She inhaled; her high dissipated into alertness. She wandered to the corner with the empty cage and stepped inside. She grabbed the bars over head and shook her weight. The steel didn’t budge. This was no mere party favor. From behind her, Lexie heard a metal clang. She whipped her head around to see a woman in a sling struggling until her chains rattled. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her black hair matted to her sweat-streaked olive skin. What had once likely been beautiful makeup now streamed down her face in rivers of black mascara and a smear of red lipstick. A blonde-goateed person stood in front of the woman in jeans, a leather vest, and a leather motorcycle cap. Lexie was unable to discern the person’s gender, even further confounded by the huge dildo that rose from their open fly. The person held the woman’s hair in a tight fist and forced her mouth onto the dildo. Behind the dangling woman, a large, bald, bare-breasted woman slipped a purple latex hand between her legs.
The scene troubled Lexie, but the woman looked euphoric, even as she gagged and coughed.
“Tonic?” Randy said, making Lexie jump. She glanced back and forth between Randy and the strung-up woman and fumbled for a word.
“Thanks,” she finally managed.
“You like this cage?” Randy asked. “I know the guy who makes them down in Cali. Kinky motherfucker. Does great work, yeah?”
“It’s the real deal,” Lexie said. “I don’t think I could break this apart with a chainsaw.”
“I suppose that’s kind of the point.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all this play is psychological, though some of it comes with physical sensation. If I locked you in a chintzy dog crate, you’d probably be more rapt with figuring out how to break it rather than surrendering to the experience. Most of this whole thing,” Randy said, gesturing to the room, “is upholding the illusion so you can give yourself over to the experience.”
“What illusion?”
“That you’re powerless,” Randy said, nodding to the black-haired girl in the sling. “Or, that you’re all-powerful.” Her gaze shifted to the person with the goatee. “Both are lies, but here, you can let yourself believe they’re true. And that’s where the magic happens.”
Lexie watched the bound girl gag and fight against her restraints. Both her frustration and her joy seemed real, their synergy driving her to ecstasy.
Randy pulled Lexie into a kiss. Her practiced lips artfully tugged on Lexie’s. Lexie opened her mouth wide and let Randy’s tongue tumble onto hers. They kissed with the insides of their mouths, locked and playing with pressure, their tongues doing all the work. The sharp cracks of leather against flesh filled Lexie’s ears, and she willed herself to relax into Randy’s strength.
“C’mere,” Randy winked. She dragged her fingernails down the tender flesh of Lexie’s forearms to grasp her hands. She lifted Lexie’s arms aloft and placed her hands on the top bars of the cage.
“Hold the bars,” Randy growled. “If you let go, I’ll stop.”
Lexie’s heartbeat quickened. The wolf paced, eager to confront the threat.
Randy pressed her mouth against Lexie’s, hard. Her lips were cool and firm. Her kiss was like a sharp intake of breath: a dart and a dodge.
Lexie felt the heat of her dampening groin and the steel bars against her palms. The collection of screams, grunts, and moans in the room drowned her brain in the delighted anguish of strangers, allowing her to slip outside her own mind and hide in the cacophony.
Randy grabbed Lexie’s hair in her fist and pulled, taking her exposed throat in her jaws. Not like Archer, Lexie thought. Not at all. She was rough where Archer was gentle, aggressive where Archer relented.
Randy was hitting all the right notes, but she wasn’t listening to Lexie, else she would have noticed her hesitation, the passive resistance that kept her from giving in. Lexie tried to release Archer’s tawny image from her mind, to replace it with the cool black and white of her new, leather-clad seducer. Randy’s teeth bit into her neck: hard against soft skin, grinding muscles and tendons. They clenched in response. Inside Randy’s jaws, she recognized the same power that teased her that night in the forest, the allure of strength that could overpower her. She felt the beginnings of panic, but Lexie told it to quiet and it did.
Lexie’s breathing quickened. Randy’s hand found the crotch of Lexie’s jeans and pressed against the moisture there.
“Naughty girl,” she purred.
Lexie rubbed her cheek against Randy’s ear, wanting to speak the word “Yes,” but failing. She removed her hands from the bars, and Randy flinched.
“Y’alright?”
Lexie scanned the room for curious eyes and found none; everyone was enraptured with their own scenes. She grabbed Randy’s wrist and forced her hand down her jeans. Randy searched Lexie’s face. Lexie met her gaze, returning her grip to the bar above her head. She closed her eyes and willed her mind to go blank—without allowing her wolf to take hold.
Randy made a sound that wasn’t quite a chuckle. Her fingers slid against Lexie’s flesh. The clinks of chains and slapping skin dissolved into the rhythm of Randy’s breath in her ear. Lexie let herself fall into the sensation, releasing her memories and fears into precious white noise.
Lexie followed the trail Randy led her down, using her hips and her moans to push her ahead, and then running to catch up. She could run all night like this, mouth open wide and grinning, Randy’s fingers coaxing her along. But something was catching up with her. It matched her steps, gaining ground with each pace. It was closing in. Lexie squeezed her eyes shut, willing it away as she had before. It didn’t listen. She heard its paws breaking branches beneath its steps, its hoarse breath hot on her neck. Its teeth were just close enough to …
“Stop.” Lexie released the bar and grabbed Randy’s wrist.
Randy stopped but didn’t remove her hand.
“You all right?” Randy asked, voice clipped.
“I just … feel a little out of control,” Lexie said.
“That’s kind of the point, sweetheart.”
Lexie shook her head, and Randy eased her hand out of her jeans.
“I already feel out of control all the time,” Lexie whispered. “I don’t think I need your help making it worse.”
Randy sighed and wiped her palms on her pants. “I’m gonna go smoke.” She didn’t wait for Lexie to offer to join her.
Lexie wandered to the front and poked her hand through the condom jar while the coat girl fetched her jacket. For a fleeting moment, Lexie wished she was in the woods with her sisters, running open-mouthed through scattered moonbeams, pleasures chaste but meaty.
“How you gettin’ on?” Glenda slapped a heavy hand on Lexie’s shoulder. It released a little of the tension knotting there.
Lexie growled a bit under her breath.
“Randy not treating you right? Seemed like you were having a good time.” Glenda set her fists on her stone-washed denim hips and gave Lexie a hard look under a concerned brow.
“She’s fine,” Lexie said. “It’s me.”
Glenda pulled a candy from her pocket and popped it in her mouth, listening.
“I feel a little out of control.”
“Alcohol? Drugs?” Glenda asked with a no-nonsense, non-judgmental tone.
Lexie grimaced. “No. Just me. My body. My mind. Stuff.” She laughed again, embarrassed at airing such ‘stuff’ to a stranger.
“Well, you look pretty in control to me. Maybe a bit too much for your own good.”
“How can you tell?”
“That’s usually what brings people here. Well, it’s number three on the list, after curiosity and a fierce need to get laid.”
Lexie laughed. “Number two might be more like it. And number one too, I guess.”
“Well, hate to say it, youngblood, bu
t all three tend to go pretty well together. Randy’s a good egg. I’ve seen her beat on ladies, and she’s pretty dern excellent at it. She’d be a good one.”
Lexie lowered her voice. “I don’t know what I need, but I don’t think it’s that.”
“Well then,” Glenda said with another friendly shoulder slap. “I think when people get into a situation like yours, they know exactly what they need, they just aren’t admitting it to themselves. You just gotta tell your brain to shut the fuck up and follow your gut.”
“That seems dangerous.”
“Usually is,” Glenda said with a sure nod. “But that’s the fucking point isn’t it?”
“Of BDSM?” Lexie asked.
“Of life!” Glenda said with a hearty laugh. “Everything worth doing is a little dangerous. You’ll see.”
On the ride home, Lexie wrapped her arms tightly around Randy’s torso and leaned into the curves. She didn’t fight or shift her weight. She followed like a dancer guided across the floor by a skilled lead. She found the ride far more pleasant for it. The motor vibrated between her legs, and she sank her haunches around the seat, losing herself in the hearty thrum of the engine.
Randy hadn’t said much between the cigarette and their departure. Lexie knew she’d hurt Randy’s feelings by ending their scene so quickly, but she didn’t particularly care. She’d felt out of control with Archer, but she had also felt safer. She knew she’d give herself over to Archer any time. Randy, not so much.
Lexie looked to the apogee of the sky, finding the white pearl of the moon. It found her back. The white light bathed them, its reflection adding a sheen to everything: chrome, leather, exposed skin, and the moonstone in her knife. The gem shone as though it were sentient, magical, somehow more than it appeared. A well of nausea crept up her throat. She buried her face into Randy’s shoulder blade, hiding from the moon and what it begged her to become.
At a lonely stop sign five miles outside of Milton, Lexie raised her head. A metallic tang drifted through the cold, fresh air. Randy lifted her visor and said, “What’s wrong?”
Before she knew why, Lexie said, “I need to get off.”
“We’re five minutes away from your place. Can’t you hold it?”
Lexie removed her helmet and leapt off the motorcycle, running to the edge of the road. A deep ditch separated the pavement from an incline down to a large marsh dotted with young pines. She sniffed the air.
It smelled of wet rot, and running through it was a blazing throb of metal and salt. Blood.
She leapt over the ditch and into the mud. Randy shouted after her.
She ran, marking her pace with the trees, and stopped where the ground sloped down to a pond. A maggot-pale shape lay amidst the tall grasses: a dead man, his guts shining in the moonlight, a gash from a claw widened by feeding. The blood pooling in the chasm of his torso mirrored the pond just beyond, black and glimmering.
Randy shouted from the road. “Lexie what the hell—?”
Something rustled in the shadows at the curve of the pond. Lexie crouched, training her eyes on the shadow, struggling to find its scent.
A shaky growl burbled in the cold, dry air.
“Lexie?” Randy’s shout echoed from the road.
Lexie drew her knife from its sheath, hopeful it would work on another wolf as well as it worked on her own.
“Lexie!” Randy shouted again. Lexie snarled and silently pleaded for Randy to stay where she was. I got this, she thought, willing it to be true. She didn’t know where this bravery was coming from. Just months ago, her instincts would have told her to flee, but now a different, wordless voice goaded her to move toward the shadow with the will to fight.
She stepped forward and caught a whiff of the wolf’s scent. He was restless, unsure whether to fight or flee. Lexie would decide for them both.
She faked; he braced. He growled a warning, but Lexie didn’t flinch.
Her mind flashed to the dungeon, to the woman in the sling. Dominate, her mind roared, as if it were a simple concept. Dominate, because that is what you’re meant to do right now. Simple as that. Lexie stood. The wolf flinched. He wasn’t so big, Lexie thought. Only two-thirds the size of the one she fought before: four feet tall and maybe four-hundred pounds. The size she was when she changed.
Her grip tightened on the hilt of her knife. Piece of cake.
She leapt into the shadows. The wolf dodged and ran. The marshy ground made them both clumsy. She tried to track him with her nose, but the breeze kept slithering in odd directions. He hid behind tree trunks as Lexie stalked sideways. She heard her breath, and his, and Randy’s nervous key-jingling back on the road.
The wolf lunged at Lexie from his hiding place, but he fell short. With a rabid cry, Lexie pounced, aiming her knife for his spine, but catching a bony shoulder blade. The knife glanced off the bone, slicing a gash through fur and skin. He squealed. Lexie slipped in the mud and fell. The wolf swung his heavy head at Lexie’s prone body, sneering and snapping. Lexie raised her arms in defense just as he dropped to the ground in convulsions. His wolf form slipped and flickered, giving way to a human body.
In a moment everything silenced except for Lexie’s heavy breaths.
The boy lay naked on his side, shivering, then crying.
Lexie turned to face him. His head rested on the marshy ground. The moonlight glanced off his corn-silk hair. Blood and mud caked the pale skin of his torso. She recognized the cluster of freckles at his temple and the smooth upward curve of his nose.
“Stefan?” Lexie whispered.
Stefan, the boy she let live when her Pack commanded his murder. Guilt stabbed her gut.
He raised his head, his tears falling freely.
“Oh, oh, Stefan.” She crawled to him and took him in her arms, the knife still clenched in her left hand and the blade flat against his bare back.
Lexie groaned. “What did you do, Stefan?” she whispered. Had she made the wrong choice when she let him live? Should she have done what the Pack commanded and offed him before he hurt anyone else?
His sobs came freely. “If I told you he deserved it … ”
Lexie sighed and stroked Stefan’s naked back. He felt as fragile as an infant and as sinewy as a street cat. “Did he?” Lexie whispered.
Stefan nodded vigorously through his heaving sobs and pressed his cheek to Lexie’s chest.
Lexie glanced over at the man’s glistening viscera. “Okay,” she said, wiping tears from Stefan’s cheek. “For now.”
Randy called out from beyond the trees, “Lexie? Are you okay?”
“We’re okay,” Lexie called. “Where are your clothes?” she asked Stefan.
Stefan gestured to a turnoff from the road hidden by trees. A silver Jaguar sat cold and still.
“Were you in it?” she asked. Stefan nodded, his face streaked with tears.
“He picked me up. And things got … wrong.”
Lexie sighed hard. “Okay, Stefan, listen. If the cops find you, you say you met him online and had a date tonight, and that he dropped you off at eleven. Okay?” Lexie gripped his chin and stared into his eyes. “You got that?”
Stefan shook his head. “They’ll find out.”
“They won’t,” Lexie said, stroking his cheek. “No one knows about us. What we are. Okay? You’ll be okay. The cops will come and they’ll ask you questions but they’ll know that a Rare wolf did it and not you, okay?”
Stefan whimpered and nodded.
Randy tromped through the marsh to where Lexie and Stefan lay together on the ground. She saw the corpse and stifled a shout.
“I’ll explain later. Can we get him home?” Lexie said.
Randy stared aghast at Lexie clutching Stefan. “Not with that!” Randy said, gesturing to the corpse laying exposed in the moonlight.
Lexie shot Randy a cold look. “They were attacked by a Rare. We need to get Stefan home. Can you carry both of us on your bike?”
Randy seemed to have no choice but
to nod, stunned and silent. She dropped Stefan at the back door to his house and took Lexie back to the Den. They stood on the creaky porch, the fog descending, a slow erasure of the sky and scenery.
“What was that?” Randy asked, finally.
“Bad luck. Bad timing. Bad wolf,” Lexie said.
“Did that kid kill the man?”
Lexie chewed her lips. In a manner of speaking. “No. A Rare did.”
Lexie zipped up her jacket as far as it would go and shoved her hands in the pockets. She didn’t have any more words to address any of it. She was learning to just trust word and instinct. Integrity had a certain scent that Lexie couldn’t parse, but she understood nonetheless. She’d smelled it on Stefan.
“Some night,” Randy said, dropping her eyes to the porch and digging her hands in her pockets. She turned and wandered back to her bike, muttering something about needing a drink. Randy sped off into the night. Lexie watched from the porch, her breath fogging in the street-lamp glare.
Lexie was dreaming of drowning when a clatter shook her from her sleep, like hailstones hitting her window.
“Lexie,” a muffled slur came from the backyard. Delirious, Lexie scanned the voices of the Pack, wondering who would be disturbing her so late. No one would even be home yet. There was still night and moonlight left. Another clatter hit her window. Not hail. Pebbles. A plea followed, and Lexie realized it was Randy.
Lexie stumbled to her window and looked out. Randy stood in the yard. As Lexie watched, she threw a fistful of gravel at Corwin and Sharmalee’s darkened window.
“Randy?” Lexie called.
Randy started and swept her glance past all the windows before seeing Lexie eight yards to the right of her target. “Can you let me in?” Randy asked.
“Why?” Lexie asked.
“I just…. What was … ? Can we talk?”
“We can talk,” Lexie said warily, pushing open the window. She pulled her blanket tighter around her and leaned on the sill.