Big on Education

by Laurie Ames

  Dylan slowly leaned down against her body, his weight comforting on top of her. Sparks flew when his skin began touching hers. She spread her legs as he crawled up between them. She began to feel safe and secure beneath him. She lifted his shirt, eager to see what lay beneath the buttons and quickly revealed his six-pack abs. She traced them; the feeling was like touching warm stones. God, he was sexy, and he was hers for the taking.

  He kissed her on the mouth and then pulled away. He made eye contact with her briefly and then kissed her cheek softly. Then he kissed along her jawline slowly, letting his tongue flick across her skin. She gasped. She wanted him so badly and right now. She wondered if he could tell.

  Dylan ran his tongue from the lobe of her ear down to her clavicle. She breathed deeply, causing her large breasts to rise and fall rhythmically. He took a moment to stop and drink that in.

  “You’re so beautiful, Amanda,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said awkwardly.

  “Do you get told that enough?” he asked genuinely.

  “Probably not,” she admitted. She wasn’t sure that any guy who wasn’t her dad had ever said something like that to her.

  “You need to be told,” he said as desire darkened his eyes.

  He plunged his mouth into her cleavage, kissing the tops of her breasts where they revealed themselves at the V-neck.

  She ran her hands through his long hair, meanwhile scratching gently with her long nails. He stopped and moaned, moving his head against her hands. She’d found something that was really turning him on.

  Dylan leaned onto one side and looked at Amanda. They stayed there, looking at each other. Finally, he reached a hand up to her neck and cupped it, running his thumb gently over her cheek. She turned into his palm, but before she could kiss it, his hand trailed down her throat, across her collarbone, and danced along the tops of her breasts.

  Her nipples tightened in response to his touch. They ached to be touched, to be licked. She’d never experienced this, and she longed to experience it with Dylan.

  His experienced hand cupped her breast and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure. She breathed deeply and saw him watch the rise and fall of her breasts.

  “God,” he said to himself.

  He drew his hand down her body and found the hem of her shirt. Slowly, he teased up the fabric, running his fingers across her belly. This delighted and surprised her and made her want all of him.

  Dylan slid his warm palm inside her shirt and made his way upwards in a smooth movement. He cupped her breast that was still shielded by her bra.

  She felt her hips begin to move. She needed more.

  Dylan sensed it because he lowered his hips to hers and pressed them into her. Amanda’s eyes widened as she felt how hard he was against his jeans. Even though the fabric of both pairs, she could feel his length pushing against her. She felt her core blaze with desire. The sensation of him between her thighs was new and she relished every moment of it. They kissed deeply, again and again, their hips grinding into each other as the moonlight poured in through the windows.

  Dylan ran his hand down her stomach and touched her heat through her jeans. She gasped at the pressure of his hand. Her eyes widened and he stopped.

  “Is it okay?” he asked.

  “Y-yeah,” she stammered clumsily, trying to find the words.

  It was as though he had read her mind when he spoke.

  “Have you ever done this with anyone before?” he asked. His words were tender, not judgmental.

  “I haven’t,” she admitted.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  She paused for a second.

  “Dylan,” she began. “I don’t know if I wanna go—that I wanna do it tonight,” she admitted.

  “That’s perfectly fine,” he said with a grin.

  She smiled back at him. He’d felt so good against her. She couldn’t quite decide what her hang up was. If she was going to lose her virginity, it should be to someone as great as Dylan. He was sweet, thoughtful, hot, and built. He was perfect. She just didn’t think she was entirely ready, though.

  Amanda was lost in thought when there was a crash in the woods near them.

  “What was that?” she hissed, immediately sitting up. Dylan’s posture stiffened as well.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Stay here.”

  He grabbed a rifle from the back floorboard and loaded it with ammunition from a bag beside it. He crawled out of the Bronco and stepped silently onto the pine needles littering the floor of the forest.

  Amanda watched as he crept through the night, shining a flashlight back and forth, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

  She darted her eyes around, trying to see something to help warn him, but her realization was too late.

  Suddenly three figures stepped out of the forest from completely different directions.

  “Dylan!” she yelled.

  “Stay there, Amanda!” he growled protectively.

  All of the figures appeared to be men. The one directly in front of Dylan spoke first.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” he sniffed the air. “Looks like a little midnight rendezvous in the woods, boys.”

  He shifted his eyes to Amanda in the Bronco.

  “Leave her out of it, Sean,” said Dylan. Apparently, he knew the men.

  The man named Sean spoke.

  “I’ll do what I want, Dylan. This isn’t your territory anymore.”

  What they hell were they talking about? Amanda wondered.

  “The hell it isn’t,” Dylan said.

  “Why don’t we take a look at little Dylan’s girlfriend, boys?” said Sean as the other two men walked towards the Bronco and positioned themselves on either side. The two creeps started leering in at her. Amanda felt panic settle on her chest like a weight. Her heart was pounding. One of them opened the driver’s side door and the other opened the passenger’s side door.

  She crawled into the back, attempting to get away from them. She looked to see if there was another weapon in the back. There was a knife and Amanda quickly grabbed it. As she tried to pull it from its sheath, one of the men grabbed her ankles and pulled hard towards him. She screamed.

  “Amanda!” she heard Dylan say.

  The other man pulled her kicking and screaming out of the Bronco. He clapped a hand over her mouth and held her hands behind her back. He walked her to the front of the SUV.

  Dylan looked at her remorsefully, as though she was caught in the crossfire of a fight that wasn’t hers. Amanda’s heart beat in her chest like an animal frantic to escape the aim of a hunter.

  The man who had hold of her leaned down and sniffed her hair. She recoiled in disgust. He brushed the hair from her neck and kissed it. She tried to scream again but his hand only clamped tighter over her mouth.

  Dylan raised the rifle towards the man in front of him.

  “Let her go,” he growled. “I swear to God, Sean…”

  “Or what? Let her go or what?” Sean spat back.

  Amanda bit down on the man’s hand and a moment was all it took. She escaped his grasp as he took a moment to observe the bite mark, cursing under his breath. She darted around to the side of the car.

  Then something entirely strange happened.

  Dylan dropped his rifle and hit his knees. Had they shot him and she didn’t hear it? But then, Sean dropped to his knees and so did the other two guys. She looked around at the four of them desperate for an answer.

  Scared, she crawled back into the Bronco and locked both doors.

  There was a violent crunching and popping like the sound of breaking bones. All of the men were crying out in pain as their body shapes began to change.

  The three men who had attacked them had shifted into the forms of black bears, but Dylan remained on his hands and knees, his body still slowly contorting.

  Amanda watched, breathless.

  The three bears began circling Dylan and at the last
possible moment his flesh erupted into beautiful majestic white fur. He slowly got up and stood on his hind legs. In the dark night, he had grown to a menacing bear standing seven feet tall. He roared at the other three with a ferocious growl that seemed to echo forever into the forest. Amanda felt both helpless and afraid but at the same time mesmerized by the great white bear that was protecting her.

  One of them jumped onto him and he effortlessly swatted him off. The bear slammed into the ground with a sickening thud. It then scrambled to its feet, whimpering in pain. The bears head was bleeding profusely. Dylan then growled at the other two like an invitation to fight.

  The two other bears signaled each other, then placed an arm around the injured bear and started walking off into the night like cowards. “This isn’t over” they yelled back as they disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

  The white-bear turned to face Amanda. She quickly got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition.

  Amanda looked down at the dash, trying to find the lights. When she looked up, Dylan was standing at the driver’s side window looking at her. She screamed again.

  “Amanda! Let me explain!”

  “What the fuck was that?!” she yelled.

  “Open the door,” he said calmly.

  Amanda thought about it for a moment. She had no idea what had just happened. She couldn’t really even believe her own eyes, she thought.

  She slowly unlocked the door and crawled as far as possible from Dylan’s side of the vehicle. It wasn’t like she hadn’t another way back down the mountain tonight.

  He shut the door and leaned back in his seat as though he was exhausted.

  “Okay, so,” he began, still looking straight ahead. “The thing is, I’m a shifter.”

  Amanda looked at him completely clueless. Was that sentence supposed to explain everything? Or even make sense?

  “I change forms,” Dylan elaborated. “My family can become the Kermode Spirit Bear. It’s like a black bear, but white, and much more powerful. We’ve been able to do it for thousands of years.”

  Amanda was speechless.

  “Those guys—that Sean guy, he’s part of the black bear tribe up here. They’ll do anything they can to keep my kind from repopulating the area.”

  Amanda wondered if they’d been watching them all night.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, finally looking at her.

  “It’s okay,” she managed, not even sure of what was coming out of her mouth.

  It was okay, she thought. No one had gotten killed. That didn’t make it any less strange. She tried to accept that this was reality. It felt a little bit like the hallway at school on the day she found out her dad might die.

  “So, does this happen often?” she asked gently.

  “More often than I’d like it to,” Dylan said with disdain in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, echoing his apology from earlier in the conversation.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. I shouldn’t have asked you out. This is why I can’t be with anyone,” he said sounding like he was extremely disappointed in himself. Amanda wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, that she was different.

  She had faced so much in the last week. This was hardly anything compared to almost losing her father.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, not really quite sure if she meant it.

  Dylan smiled sadly at her.

  “You don’t have to make this your fight,” he said. “You barely know me.”

  “But I want to know you,” she said softly.

  Dylan’s face changed from sadness to hope. She wondered how many girls had walked away from him after finding out his secret. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to be one of them.

  She smiled at him and took his hand, giving it a squeeze.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  “Let’s go for a hike,” Dylan said over the phone.

  “I’m not exactly a hiker,” Amanda replied.

  “Oh, come on. With me as your guide, you’ll do great!” he said with enthusiasm. It was infectious. Amanda couldn’t tell him no.

  “I guess with a hunting guide, I’m sure to see some wildlife, right?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Well, with me you’re always seeing wildlife,” he said playfully.

  “Har har,” she said.

  Dylan chuckled. They said goodbye and he had agreed to come pick her up in about an hour. It had been two days since the incident with the black bears and Amanda was starting to regain a sense of normalcy in her life.

  Well, as normal as life can be, considering all that has happened lately, she thought.

  She threw her phone onto the bed and went to the window that peeked right into the woods behind the cabin. She wondered what her father would think about everything that had happened the other night. What would he do? He has always been her strength and had always taught her to be braver than she actually felt. She was trying desperately to live up to that. She had real feelings for Dylan, and her dad would tell her to never let fear get in the way of having what she really wanted, although she wasn’t entirely sure he had this exact situation in mind.

  She smiled at the thought of someday telling her dad what was going on. They have always been so very close. Much closer than she and her mom were, and that was saying a lot. A pang of grief hit her deep in the stomach. It felt like the opposite of butterflies, like a deep hollowness that could never be filled up.

  Amanda tried to shake the thoughts from her mind. She wasn’t going to be sad today. She was going to enjoy her hike with Dylan, even if she’d never hiked more than half a mile in her life and had complained the whole time to her Girl Scout leader. She wouldn’t tell Dylan about that.

  She pulled out some of her toughest jeans and a pair of boots that she’d actually only brought in case of emergency. They would work. They were actually meant for hiking, so who would know that she hadn’t intended to use them for that?

  After she got dressed, she made herself a snack in the kitchen and started to pack any supplies that she would need. There was some left over first aid supplies in the pantry from trips her family had taken here. She grabbed that. She got some water bottles and a stick of beef jerky, just in case. Not that it would sustain them for very long should they somehow get lost. She was counting on the fact that Dylan took tourists out to hunt big horn sheep all the time.

  By the time she had eaten and packed her bag, Dylan was pulling up in front. She saw his Bronco through the kitchen sink window. She grabbed her things and met him out front.

  “About time,” she teased. Her confidence around him was growing ever since he’d shared such a secret part of his life—a part of his life that had alienated him from so many others.

  “Like you weren’t just now packing,” he said with that crooked grin that got her every time.

  She climbed on in and they were off, curving around forested roads up to a different part of the mountain.

  “This is my favorite hiking trail,” he said as they pulled up to an actual parking lot this time. That was a good sign, she thought.

  They got out of the car and got their packs strapped on. Dylan took charge and led the way.

  Amanda found it alarming how fast you could get lost in the woods. They had only been hiking for a couple of minutes and now they were surrounded by trees. Without Dylan, she didn’t know if she would find her way back out. She could follow the trail back, she supposed, but it made her wonder how the trail was made in the first place.

  She tried to keep up with his pace, but her short legs weren’t allowing it.

  “Slow down!” she cried out after him.

  It was as though he’d forgotten his companion was so short, or even that he had a companion at all. Dylan seemed perfectly at ease in the woods while Amanda was a nervous wreck. A branch fell to the ground off to their right and she startled, becoming suddenly still.

  “Chill,”
he said, chuckling. “It’s just a branch falling. No need for alarm.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Spidey sense,” he joked.

  She decided to trust him on this one. They kept meandering through the forest, just following the trail. At one point Dylan stopped.