“No. Don’t.”
“I can bring you some food.”
“Kelly, don’t do that.”
“What do you like? Bagels? Peanut butter? No, you’re a werewolf… Probably meat? I could pick up a hamburger…”
“Don’t do that!” he roared, spinning angrily and advancing on me. I was still naked and instinctively, I dropped my clothes, hoping deep down that he was going to force me up against a tree and make love to me once more…
“I’m dangerous, damn it. Don’t you see that? I all but tore you apart this time. What’ll happen the next time?”
“But…”
“But nothing. Forget this ever happened. I…”
He took a deep breath. Was he holding back tears? I wanted to take him in my arms, my poor wolf boy…
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”
I went to him as he turned from me, pushing my breasts against his back as he drew slow, heaving breaths.
“No, no, no…” I whispered. “Wisdom, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“There’s everything to be sorry about.”
“Wisdom…”
“Kelly… I…”
“No, you don’t understand! I loved it—this was incredible. I couldn’t have imagined my first time being any better… This was magical.”
“Oh, god… And it was your first time too… I’m a monster.”
I leaned my head against his back, feeling its warmth and its sweat and smelling the scent of his manliness and his animal-ness, the fierce, musky, masculine scent that drove me wild and made me want to jump on him once more.
“No, it was amazing…” I whispered, kissing his back. But he didn’t reply. I felt him grow cold, go stony hard underneath my touch.
“I’m a monster, Kelly,” he said finally. “And I’m dangerous. This was the worst full moon I’ve ever had—they keep getting worse and worse, more violent and demented the older I get.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m unhappy about that,” I whispered, reaching around to grasp his cock. I was amazed to find it already erect again.
“You know, I want to just throw you on the ground and tear you to shreds…” he whispered, glancing back at me. “I want to make you cry and leave you a bloody mess. It’s taking all my will power not to fuck you half-to-death right now.”
“You have my permission,” I whispered, trying to be sultry as I kissed his neck. “I liked what we did so far…”
“No…” he gasped, pushing away from me. It was clearly a difficult thing to do—I could see how conflicted he was, feel how much he wanted to take me, how much he wanted me to be around him again, to be under him, to be crying and screaming for him…
“No. I won’t do it.”
“Do it. Make me yours, Wisdom. I submit.”
“No. Get out of here.”
“Wisdom…”
“Do it! Go!” he all but screamed, pushing me hard. I tumbled to the ground and as I gathered myself, collecting my clothes, I saw him bounding off into the forest, disappearing completely into the moonlit night.
“Wisdom…” I whispered, my eyes straining to make out his disappearing form. But he was gone and I was left alone, alone with my thoughts and my passions and fears, and nothing else—nothing else but the clothes he had torn from my body, as carelessly and brutally as he had torn out my heart.
“Don’t… Don’t leave me…” I whispered once more, hoping against home that he would hear, but it was not to be. With a sigh, I began to gather up my clothes, began to slide them back onto my sore, abused body, not looking forward to the hard walk back to the diner, my entire body aching of passion and love-making, my insides sore and swollen, and my heart… Broken.
Homecoming
I walked back to the diner as broken as my heart was, on the verge of tears. My clothes were dirty and I was thankful that I met no one along the way who might have witnessed my shame.
I finished closing up the diner as I had been doing when I first met Wisdom. I felt like every one of my movements was infused with sadness and missing now—I wanted him back.
And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t believe what had happened.
Had I really met a werewolf? Had I really made love to a werewolf in the middle of a forest? Had I really done all sorts of nasty things to him with my mouth and unmentionable bits? God… It was so hard to imagine but in fact, it was true. I had done it. I had done it all.
The aching in my pussy attested to that. God, I was going to be swollen down there for days… Weeks, maybe.
Finally, I had finished cleaning up and closing the diner. I flicked the lights off with a sad little flicker and slunk off to my car to find my way home.
Along the long, lonely, dark country roads that led me to my parents’ house, I couldn’t help but turn my thoughts to Wisdom—couldn’t help but think about him, about what he had done to me—about what we had done together.
I remembered his touch. I remembered his scent. I remembered the fire and sadness in his eyes. All of it—all of these memories, which were so recent but already seemed so distant, seemed to have been made so long ago—now played over and over in the cinema of my mind like a never-ending film that reminded me of what I had had and what I had lost. There was no way around it.
Wisdom was gone and I would never have him again. It was a one-time thing.
Why did I care? Why did it hurt me so hard, hurt me so deep that he was gone, that he didn’t want to stay with me?
I tried to tell myself it was nothing personal. That he had problems that would keep us apart. Keep us apart irrevocably. I tried to tell myself that there was nothing that could bring us together again.
But still. I still missed him. I still craved him.
I tried to tell myself that it had just been lust, not love. I tried to tell myself that other girls—my friends, for instance, and especially my best friend, Marianne—are fine with lust, fine with having a lover for a night and being everything to him, and then letting him go in the morning. That’s the way things are now.
Hookups and sexting. That was what I was supposed to want.
This was what I was supposed to want—a few quick, hard fucks in the woods, and then I never see him again.
But I couldn’t bring myself to accept that. I wanted Wisdom back. I wanted it to be love. I wanted him to love me, and I wanted to love him.
Maybe I was naïve. Maybe it was dumb. It was probably both of those things.
But I believe, firmly, that love is never a bad choice. And if it’s dumb to choose love, than every other choice must be even dumber.
I got home finally, an hour later than I was supposed to. I noticed the light on in our living room and I realized that my father was probably up waiting for me. He hates my being out late and he’ll stay up hours until I come home from a friend’s house or a late shift at the diner.
As soon as I stepped into the house, I felt his eyes fall on my torn, filthy clothes.
“Kelly!” he gasped. “What the hell happened to you?”
He wasn’t even mad. His old, kind face had tried to be mad, I could tell, but instead, the sight of me just inspired pity. Yeah, I was fine with that right now.
“I, uh, got into a fight with the deep fryer,” I said with a shrug. “And the deep fryer one.”
“Damn it all to hell,” my father said, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his face with one hand under his reading glasses. He set down his copy of the New York Times, his favorite evening reading material, and sighed.
“I’ve been telling Janice for years we’ve got to get that thing replaced.”
“Well, it might still have a few more months in it… It’s nothing urgent…” I said lamely, just glad that my excuse had been believed.
“Just long enough to shop around for a new one, I suppose…” my father mumbled, taking up his paper again. As I started to head to my room, he called out my name once more.
“Kelly.”
“Yeah, dad?” I asked, frozen in terror. Had he noticed something else? Maybe the blood from where Wisdom had nibbled and bit me? Maybe semen, or some stain that couldn’t plausibly have come from erupting fry grease?
“Marianne’s brother Ryan is home on break from college. He called this evening looking for you.”
My eyes widened.
“R-really? That’s nice.”
“You should see if he’ll take you out for a nice dinner,” my dad said with a smile. “I feel like you must get so bored, hanging out here in Greencliff. You should have some fun every now and then.”
“Oh, dad…” I mumbled, as I slid into my room. “I have plenty of fun.”
~
I awoke the next morning feeling like I had the worst hang over of all time—but I hadn’t even been drinking. No, this was the hangover, I realized, that came from hard, rough loving—the hang over that was caused by rough passion, that was caused by the pain and pleasure of being bent over and taken by a beast of a man…
It was an ache that I still loved, even though I had trouble sitting up and my insides felt like they had swollen themselves shut. It was an ache that I loved, all right.
I finally found the wherewithal to give Ryan a call back. It was easy—I had long since memorized Marianne’s number. Mostly because we were best friends, but also because I had always hoped that Ryan would pick up instead of Marianne or one of her parents.
“Hello?” a deep, thick voice answered. My heart skipped a beat. It was just as I had remembered his voice being. It was a voice that had given my junior high self goose bumps and now, even though I was older, I still couldn’t help but get chills all up and down my spine when I heard him.
“Ryan? It’s Kelly.”
“Oh, Kelly, hi. I was hoping you’d call me back today.”
“Yeah, of course… What’s up? Are you home on break?”
“Well, not exactly break… But yeah, I’m home—hanging out at my parents’ house.”
“Definitely sounds exciting.”
Ryan laughed. His laugh was incredible. I loved his laugh. I wanted to make him laugh more.
“So, what’s the deal? Is it some resort vacation?”
“Not quite… But hey, why don’t you come over sometime this afternoon? We can sit in the back yard and throw beer cans at the trees, just like we did when we were kids.”
I grinned inwardly, remembering the long, boring summer afternoons I had spent over at Marianne’s house, drinking light beer and wasting time until nightfall. It seemed like life had always been summer when I was younger, and now it was always rainy, or cold, or beaten down and broken—or maybe that was just me. Maybe it was just my perspective that made all of my youngest memories seem to be summertime memories, and all of my current reality seem to be irretrievably condemned to a cold, semi-permanent winter world.
“Sure thing. That sounds great,” I said finally, bringing myself back to the world of the present. “I’d love to chuck some beer cans with you.”
“Great. It’s a date,” Ryan said and once again, my heart filled up.
~
What to wear to a date to a guy’s house?
And what to wear when you’ve just been man-handled by a werewolf, practically beyond believe?
I took stock of the situation in the bathroom. My entire body was bruised—bite marks, scratch marks, welts, everything. Our love-making had been hot and hard, but it had left its trace.
I went to work with cover-up and tinted body lotion. Fortunately, I happen to be something of a make-up addict and I had plenty of tools for the job. Even if I couldn’t make it look like nothing had ever happened, I could at least make sure it didn’t look as though I were a professional MMA fighter if I had an opportunity to take off my clothes in front of Ryan.
It was a warm day for early spring, appropriate for Ryan’s homecoming, as if he had brought summer back with him from wherever he had taken it, along with my virginal adolescence. It was good to remember how things had been, even if they might never be that way again.
Still… I couldn’t help but notice the odd coincidence of Ryan arriving at the same time as Wisdom. They looked so much alike, and I felt about them in such similar ways…
Yet Ryan felt like home, even his voice, where Wisdom—he felt like nothing I could really identify. Something so far beyond where I was now, and where I had ever been before.
I chose a long maxi dress with cute foxes and flowers on it. Something sassy that would complement my curves and my red hair.
I decided to skip the underwear too, because hey, I was feeling sassy! And besides, I was still so swollen down there that the idea of going commando sounded kind of nice.
And, on the off chance that Ryan happened to get under my dress… Well, he would be in for a nice surprise.
Marianne’s house was an easy three mile drive from my parents’. She had gone off to college too after high school, to the University of Vermont like Ryan. I had decided to work for a year to save up money before I joined them. I had gotten more scholarship money than they had, but my family had way less in the way of resources than theirs did, and so college just didn’t seem plausible in the near future.
I wondered if she were home too. Was this spring break? Or maybe a long weekend? Whatever it was, I was delighted to be seeing Ryan.
I pulled into their driveway and knocked at the front door. I heard Ryan’s voice come from behind the house.
“Kelly, is that you?” he called out, his voice sending pleasant chills up my spine.
“Sure it!”
“I’m back here. Come on back!”
I couldn’t contain my grin as I headed back behind the house, though it melted away when I saw the sight that awaited me.
Ryan was sitting beside the pool, a beer can in his hand. And he was in a wheel chair.
“Ryan!” I cried. “What… What happened?”
“Well, hello to you to!” he said with a laugh, rolling over to me. “Come here and give me a hug.”
I leaned down to hug him, feeling his muscles still so strong beneath his University of Vermont t-shirt, feeling his strength, even with his legs… What was wrong with them?
“I… Sorry, I can’t… What happened?”
“Car accident,” he said with a shrug, as if it weren’t that big a deal—as if he weren’t in a wheel chair.
“Oh, god, Ryan…” I said, my knees going weak. I found a lawn chair and brought it over to sit next to him. Ryan dug a beer out of a cooler and tossed it to me.
“It’s my fault,” he said with another shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t just a car accident. I was driving. And…”
He wiggled the can of beer. “Had a few too many of these.”
I flushed.
“You idiot! You could have killed someone! You could have been killed yourself! Did you think about that? Did you kill anyone?”
“God, Kelly, of course I know that… I’m the one who has to live with it and see my parents’ disappointed faces every morning…” he said with a scowl. “I was hoping that you, of all people, would cut me some slack and let me relax.”
My face softened. I wanted to be mad at him, but mostly I just felt sorry.
“And for your information, no, I didn’t kill anyone. I was the only one in the car. And I crashed into a tree. I didn’t even get that far. Turned a little too fast about a block from the party and boom—oak tree.”
“Oh, god, Ryan…”
“I know, I know…” he said with a sigh. “So, I’m taking the rest of the semester off to recuperate and going back for summer classes.”
“I bet you’re excited to be back here in Greencliff.”
“Enraptured.”
“Is that a big college word?”
“Sure is. You’ll learn it when you come next year.”
I couldn’t help but grin, despite the seriousness of what had happened to him, despite everything else… Ryan always did that to me.
That was something I coul
d never imagine getting from Wisdom—humor. The curse of being a werewolf was so much greater than this setback in Ryan’s life—forced to relax at home while he healed, versus a permanent and growing aversion to the moon and the bestial nature that it provided… No wonder Wisdom was so glum about things and Ryan so carefree.
Submission to the Wolf (Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Alpha Male Erotic Romance) Page 3