I bite my lip. My ears have started itching and my skin could sprout hair any second. But for once, I’m not afraid of it. Isabeau’s seen me as a wolf. Going feral is nothing compared to that.
“Yeah…”
Isabeau slides inside, slow and deep. Her fingers do things to me that just aren’t fair. She doesn’t thrust, but she hooks forward, searching for the puffy place that makes me howl. When she hits it, I’m a goner. Pressure shoots through me, and I clutch tight around her curling fingers, trying to hold them in place.
While I hit my peak, Isabeau slides her thumb over my clit. She rubs the tip this time, spreading my wetness around and around. She kisses a sloppy trail back up to my shoulder and takes a few more pulls from the base of my neck, but aside from the extra spike of warmth, I hardly notice. Between her fingers and her thumb, I’ve plumb forgot how to breathe.
By the time my hips stop quivering, there’s a sticky stain under me. I’m trembling all over, but at the same time, I’m totally relaxed. There isn’t a bit of tension anywhere in my body. Isabeau has worked it all out. I try to say something, a thank you at least, but all that comes out in a soft groan.
Isabeau releases me with a soft pop. “Better?” she whispers underneath my ear.
I blink to try and clear my head. I’m dizzy, but I don’t think it’s from blood loss. It’s gotta be the orgasm I just had. “Uh-huh…”
“Good.” She pulls out and drapes herself over me, almost like a cool blanket. Her springy curls tickle the back of my neck and her nose nuzzles into the crook of my shoulder. It’s comfy, but I can feel my strength coming back. Isabeau’s done so much for me already. I want to show her how much I appreciate her, too.
I squirm out from underneath her, tipping her onto her back. Isabeau looks surprised, but also pleased as I climb on top of her. “I thought you might go to sleep.”
“Naw.” I take her wrists, lifting them gently and urging her to wrap her hands around the slats in my headboard. “I’m a service top. We don’t leave ladies unsatisfied.”
Isabeau chuckles. “Service top? You didn’t look like a service top just now.”
“I know how to take turns too.”
Isabeau just grins up at me. Her smile is so bright, and even without the lights on, my glowing eyes can pick up the golden highlights in her brown skin. Well, if she doesn’t believe me, I’ll just have to prove it. I kiss her, teasing her lips apart with my tongue and guiding one of her knees around my waist. I start a subtle grind, pumping my hips until I feel her wetness paint my belly. She’s already hot and slick, a contrast to the rest of her skin.
I can tell Isabeau wants to wrap her arms around me, but she settles for both her legs instead. We shift and arch together, her clinging to the headboard, me holding her hips and helping her rub against my stomach. It’s times like this I wish I had a strap-on or something, so I could thrust inside her.
Isabeau seems to be managing just fine without one, though. She nips at my neck without biting down, making little whimpers every time I push against her. Her lips are spread open and she’s wet enough for me to feel the point of her clit as she bucks up into me. I tighten my abdomen. Apparently, the extra muscle that comes with being a werewolf can be useful.
“Riley…” She mumbles my name against my ear with ticklish breaths. “Yes, just like that…”
I keep hold of Isabeau’s hips as I kiss down her collarbone toward her chest. Her nipples are thick and dark, drawn into stiff peaks. I take one in my mouth, rolling my tongue around the tip. Isabeau arches, pulling the headboard hard enough to make the whole bed creak. I don’t care. This is a piece of shit bedframe anyway. If it breaks, it breaks.
As I kiss across to her other breast, Isabeau’s hips take up a faster rhythm. Or, they try to. I hold her steady, forcing her to go at my pace. I don’t want this to end too fast. I want to make her feel as good as she made me feel. I want to show her how beautiful she is, how much I appreciate her.
Isabeau’s thighs are soft and yielding as I slide my hands down them. I grip her ass, squeezing it in my hands, helping her lift as she rocks against my stomach. She’s close. She has to be, the way she’s twitching against me, beneath me. Even though I’ve already come, I’m aching too just watching her. Feeling her shudder and shake beneath me, smelling how ready she is to be taken, brings out more of my wild side than the full moon.
“Riley,” she gasps again, louder this time. “Baby, please, make me come.”
I groan into her chest. It’s hard to choose which part of that sentence I love most. I love the way she says my name, the way she calls me baby, and especially the way she’s begging me to come. I don’t have the heart to deny her. Isabeau’s been so good to me already. I bite the tender skin above her breast and speed up for a few more slippery thrusts.
Isabeau seizes up, throwing her head back and shivering all over. A rush of heat spills out of her, smearing my stomach, sliding everywhere. I can feel all her soft parts pulsing against my skin. It’s exhilarating. I’ve never made a girl come just by rubbing against her before. But as hot as it is, it doesn’t feel like enough. Isabeau’s hips are still giving short little jerks, and even though she’s coming, her whines are getting louder.
I let go of my grip on her ass and bring one hand between us, slipping two fingers inside her. There isn’t even a bit of resistance. Isabeau stiffens, sighs, and I watch as a huge smile spreads across her face. Her silky walls clamp down tight around me, rippling and pulsing as she finishes coming in my palm.
I start thrusting, pressing the heel of my hand into Isabeau’s clit until I’m sure she’s finished. It takes a while, but she keeps her hands on the headboard through the whole thing. She’s a vision, graceful arms stretched above her head, her whole body open to me. I kiss light circles around her nipples until she stops trembling and the stream of heat running down my wrist subsides.
Isabeau’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, but when she opens them, they’re full of joy. “Okay,” she laughs, “you win. You’re a service top. For now.”
“I better be.” I kiss the point of her chin. “’Cuz you look happy as a Junebug.”
She giggles again and rolls her eyes. “Never stop talking the way you do, Riley. It’s cute.”
Normally, I would bristle at being called ‘cute’. But since it’s Isabeau, I don’t mind. “As cute as a golden retriever?”
“Cuter.”
Isabeau lets go of the headboard, winding her arms around me. I’m a little shocked the bed made it, but happier she’s holding me. “Hey, Riley…” She runs her fingertips down my back, digging one heel lightly into the back of my leg. “You’re still inside me.”
I have to swallow down the moisture that rises in my mouth. “Yup.” I can still feel her clenching faintly around her fingers.
“So…will you make me come again? Please?”
I catch her lips in a deep kiss and start thrusting. I doubt she’ll take long, but I’m gonna try and make it last.
Chapter Four - Isabeau
“SERIOUSLY, IZZY, WHERE DO you get all this junk? Just this closet could be its own museum! There’s some delusional curator out in Portland who’d pay through the nose for vintage neon everything.”
I crawl out from the overstuffed bedroom closet I’m half-buried in, brushing stray dust bunnies off my leggings. This is one of the serious downsides of living forever, or in my case, living unchanged for the past twenty years. I’ve had two decades to collect a bunch of stuff I don’t actually need.
“What did you find?” I ask, picking myself up off the floor.
Elyse, my best friend and boss, is currently sitting cross-legged in the middle of a junkpile—old scarves, knitted hats, and even a few stuffed animals. A large cardboard box with bright blue duct tape along one side is sitting in her lap. The corners look thin and frayed, almost like they’re going to split apart.
“No idea, but judging from the dust, I’m guessing it hasn’t been touched in at least ten y
ears. You really need to clean more often. I already found a middle school yearbook from 1983 and a box full of slap bracelets. Slap bracelets, Izzy.”
“I do clean,” I protest, but I’m quickly distracted by the sea of treasure around her. “So, where are those slap bracelets?”
“Here.” Elyse shoves an old shoebox in my direction. “Knock yourself out. It’s not like we have the rest of your apartment to clean…”
I cough in embarrassment. We haven’t even gotten to the bathroom yet and I don’t want to think about all the empty makeup tubes I’ll find that I haven’t touched since the turn of the century.
“…just because you’re bringing some girl to your place regularly now.”
“She’s not ‘some girl’. Her name is Riley.” I slap one of the plastic bracelets around my wrist. Fortunately, it still works. It’s a bunch of smiling rainbows with eyes—pride colors, although that’s pure coincidence. “Which you already know, because I’ve seen her contact information in your phone, and I’ve caught you Googling her at work.”
“Until she passes the Best Friend Inspection, which is both arbitrary and specific, because I love you, she’s just ‘some girl’ to me. Look, I believe that you believe she’s a mensch, but until I see how great she supposedly is myself, I’m not gonna know for sure.” Elyse takes a slap bracelet out of the shoebox and snaps it around her wrist, a blue one with glittery ocean waves. “What?” she says reproachfully when I give her a look. “I lived through the ‘80s too. I’m a year older than you.”
“And yet you still act like you’re my mother,” I grumble.
“Really? You think this is my overprotective Jewish mother routine? You’ve met my actual mother, right? You know, the one who thinks I’m dead if I leave the house and don’t text her five minutes later to say I got the subway? I’m just showing regular friendly concern.”
I roll my eyes, but Elyse has a point. Her mother is a handful, which makes me glad we never dated. “I’ll introduce Riley to you, I promise. I just…it’s new, okay? And scary. The last time you met someone I was dating—”
“Natasha, I know. But introducing your girlfriend to your best friend isn’t a curse. And trust me, I know curses. I’ve had to undo my fair share of them.”
I take another bracelet out of the box and slap it on my other wrist, a pink one this time. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I protest, but it sounds weak even to my ears. While it’s true that Riley and I aren’t technically girlfriends, it feels like we’re headed in that direction. She’d looked visibly disappointed a few weeks ago during the full moon when I’d reminded her we weren’t exclusive. Strangely, her disappointment had actually made me feel hopeful.
“But you want her to be, right?” Elyse asks, leaning forward over the box. She looks eager for details, in only the way a nosey best friend can.
I adjust the patterned pink scarf I’ve tied over my hair to protect it, shrugging helplessly. “I guess. It’s just been a while since I had an actual girlfriend. I’m out of practice.”
“Yes, you’re extremely rusty with this whole ‘I like her, she likes me, we have great sex and are more or less emotionally cognizant of one another’ thing. How tragic. Speaking of which…” Elyse nods at the box. “You want me to open it? You know, in case it’s from The Dark Beforetimes? The 80s really weren’t your worst era, if you think about it.”
“I had braces and headgear. They definitely weren’t my best.”
“All recorded for posterity in that yearbook, and soon to be posted on instagram from my phone.”
I glare at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”
She ignores me. “So? Is that a yes or a no?”
I lean back with a sigh, bracing my weight on my hands. “Yeah, sure, go for it.”
Elyse grabs a boxcutter from the nearby desk and slices open one of the sloppily taped seams. The sound of cardboard scratching against cardboard sends a shudder down my spine, and I wince until Elyse manages to pull it open. Her eyes widen in surprise as she peers in, then her lips twitch in a smirk. “Uh, Izzy?” She pulls out a pair of velvet-lined black handcuffs, dangling them from one finger. “You wanna tell me what era this is from?”
My face burns. Of course, I’ve told her to open a box full of bondage stuff. “I completely forgot about this,” I say, half-pleading without really knowing what I’m pleading for. Mercy, I guess. She’ll probably tease me about this for the next decade.
“So, is this your Natasha-era, or from before? Or after, even?”
I sit up with a groan, burying my forehead in my hand. The rainbows on my wrist stare back up at me, mocking me. “Yeah, that’s Natasha-era. Just get rid of the box, okay? Let’s pretend we never found it.”
“Uh-huh,” Elyse says, but she doesn’t make any attempt to close it back up. Instead, she begins sorting through it, drawing out even more embarrassing items. There’s a pair of padded black restraints, as well as some soft red rope and lots of silk scarves. “I knew you were a bondage bunny, but this is a lot of stuff. There are doubles of almost everything in here! What, were you worried they’d break from overuse? Pretty sure they don’t mean wear and tear quite so literally, Izzy...” She withdraws a slightly bent but well-made riding crop, swishing the hard leather tab through the air so it makes a whistling noise. “If you don’t want this, can I have it?”
“No, you cannot.” I snatch the crop from her, tucking it under my thighs and sitting on it so she can’t get to it.
“Why are you so protective of a bunch of gear you’re just going to throw away?” Elyse pulls something out from the bottom of the box: a gleaming steel spreader bar. “You’re not emotionally attached to this stuff, are you?”
I chew my lip. It’s a complicated question. I’m not emotionally attached to this stuff in particular, but bondage is a part of me. A sorely neglected part of me, since I can’t do it with just anyone, but a part of me, nonetheless. There’s something freeing about being tied up and vulnerable, completely at someone else’s mercy. At least, when that someone isn’t a cheating asshole and habitual liar.
Elyse notices my silence. “You wouldn’t have boxed it up back then if you wanted to trash it, huh?”
I sigh, then shake my head no.
“Then do you want to keep it?”
I shake my head again. It reminds me of Natasha.
“Well, other than donating this stuff, or at least some of it since you have so very much to spare, to your awesome friend as payment for services rendered, those are your only two options. You need to pick one or the other.”
I groan and lean back, lying on the cushion of my hair and staring up at the ceiling. “Ugh, I don’t know.”
“Do you want my opinion?” The question is a bit of a surprise, since Elyse usually offers opinions without being asked for them.
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice. Just because I talk doesn’t mean you have to listen. But really, I think this one’s pretty clear: keep this stuff and use it with Riley.”
“Wait, what? No. That’s…” I fiddle with the slap bracelet on my wrist. “That’s weird, right? How would I even bring it up? ‘Hey, Riley. I found a bunch of bondage stuff in my closet that my shitty ex and I used to use. Wanna play with it?’”
“You could work on your delivery a little, but yes. That’s basically how you would bring it up. Might want to lead more with the whole ‘I want to do this with you’ angle, then bring up your ex and unload your tragic backstory in one conversation.” Elyse sets the box aside and crawls over to join me by the closet. “Hey,” she says, hovering over me with a small, reassuring smile on her face. “This isn’t like you, Izzy. You wear the tallest heels and the boldest lipsticks of anyone I know. There’s no reason to hide from any of this. These are all good things, remember? And if Riley is the person you so enthusiastically believe that she is, well, she’ll probably just want to make you happy. Not like that shemdrick.”
I wince. Natasha is a sore spot for me
, even twenty years later. Back then, before everything had fallen apart, the two of us had been so happy. Before her face can solidify in my mind, I think about Riley. We haven’t known each other long, but Riley is Natasha’s opposite in every way. She’s a little shy, but brave when it counts, like asking me to come to Central Park with her during the last full moon. She’s honest, and she doesn’t care too much about impressing other people. She’s just herself.
“Okay,” I say, scooting back and sitting up. “You win. I’ll do it.”
“Really? I thought I’d have to wear you down for another fifteen minutes. Then break for lunch, rework the whole spiel, and go at it for another thirty or so. But this is good, too. Great, even.” A sly smirk spreads across Elyse’s face. “You’ve got the itch, huh?”
Elyse isn’t wrong. I glance at my bed, a shudder racing down my spine. It’s not too hard to picture myself spread-eagle on the mattress, tied to the bedposts while Riley stalks across the room toward me. She looks and acts more like a golden retriever than a wolf most of the time, but there has to be a predator buried deep inside her.
“Maybe a little.”
Elyse dumps all the stuff she’s been rummaging through back into the box and shoves it toward me. “Okay. But I’m taking these.” She grabs the shoebox full of slap bracelets.
“Like hell you are.” I reach for the other end of the box and tug.
Elyse keeps pulling. “Trust me, they’ll ruin your fashion-forward vibe.”
“There’s a thing called retro. Learn it.”
“Retro is for the West Village, and clothing designers when they run out of ideas every twenty years. Which means I’m taking the bracelets.”
“You just want them all for yourself.”
“To recycle them, hopefully,” Elyse insists. “Lord only knows with plastic this old.”
“Stop lying.” I finally succeed in snatching the box from her. “Here.” I grab a few handfuls and toss them onto her lap. “You can have some of them.”
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