by Eden Winters
Although yipping and meowing emerged from deep inside the bowels of the building, Seth detected no human consciousness behind the door marked “Kennel.”
A barest hint of humanity brushed his senses when Andy stopped and unlocked a door marked, “Storage.” Instead of containing shelves or cages, the space resembled a hospital room. A bowl-shaped pillow sat in the center of the bed, a brown and tan body lying in the depression. An IV stand stood next to the bed, one end of the plastic tubing running into Dustin’s leg.
The room smelled of blood and antiseptic. A swath of bandages, stained crimson, hid most of Dustin’s middle. One paw was wrapped, as well. Seth damped down his fear—it wouldn’t help his lover.
He felt awkward talking to a possum, but only for a moment. This was Dustin, whom he’d known for years. “Hey, you,” he said, crouching down to be nose to nose with the injured animal. “How ya doing?” As gently as possible, he reached out to stroke a bare ear. Dustin forced out a contented sigh, canting his head to give Seth better access.
Andy chuckled. “He’s not a total goner if he can still get off on an ear scratch. I’ll leave you two alone for a minute and go check on the chopper.”
Dustin whimpered, but not in pain.
“Yes, Junior showed his true colors. The whole passel is calling him a coward. They denied his claims.” Seth scrunched his lips in a rueful smile. “I may be totally out of my element, but for good or bad, they’ve named me the Jack.”
A sharp yip escaped Dustin.
“Whoops, sorry, didn’t mean to scratch too hard.” Seth switched to Dustin’s other ear, listening closely to chirps and squeaks that translated to “Are you really going to have an heir, or did Monica say that to shut Junior up?”
“That much is true, well, sorta true,” Seth replied. “Monica took me to a fertility clinic to make a deposit, wants to be my surrogate when the time comes—for Irene’s sake.”
If and when the time came, would Dustin be there? He didn’t want leadership. Would he want fatherhood?
Now wasn’t the time to consider such things.
Seth stroked a finger along Dustin’s neck, carefully avoiding his injuries. What soft fur. Until recently, Seth had never really thought about possums, hadn’t even seen one since leaving Georgia, but Dustin? Dustin made one damned fine specimen, in either form. “There’s one condition.”
Dustin cheeped.
“Seems Monica had ulterior motives announcing she’d be the mother of my child. Suggesting that she’ll soon be pregnant excuses her from passel duties. Why she doesn’t want anything to do with leadership beats the hell out of me. She’s so damned good at it.”
Possum Dustin gave a weak nod, cheeping out, “She lacks social skills and knows it. But she makes excellent backup.”
That she did. And a hell of a teacher too. Maybe he should assign her to work with Tiffany and other new shifters. “That she does. But her declining second duties means you’ve got no choice but to get better soon, ’cause the people get kinda antsy if you mess with their leadership structure. And until you get better, Widow Pickens insists on filling the role.” He shuddered, recalling the old lady’s leering grin and her cackled “Hit me, big boy!” while reaching for his hand.
The sound Dustin made might have been the possum equivalent of a snicker.
“Will you be okay?”
Dustin extended his tongue, giving Seth’s hand a quick lick.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
The concern in twin button eyes seemed to say, Me and you both, pal!
Seth inclined his head, placing a kiss on Dustin’s snout. “You get better and come back to me. We got us some celebrating to do.”
It might have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to Seth that Dustin nodded.
Andy appeared in the doorway, two strangers in flight gear behind him, their uniforms emblazoned with “Channel Four Action News.” One reeked to high heavens of skunk, the other of chipmunk. “Y’all set? We need to get moving.”
“Huh?” Seth’s gaze traveled from the new arrivals to Andy and back again.
“It’s our cover. These boys have an excuse to be up in the air—no explanations needed.”
“Oh.” Seth kissed Dustin’s nose again. “I’ll be waiting.”
He watched the men prepare Dustin for the journey, then stood in the parking lot and stared at the heavens long after the helicopter lifted.
An arm fell over his shoulders. “You can’t help worrying, but these next few weeks are critical. Prove to the passel you’re the right choice. Dustin would tell you the same thing if he were here. I’ll keep you informed, and he’ll be back soon, I promise.”
Seth reached up and patted Andy’s arm. “I hope you’re right, man, I hope you’re right.”
“I’d love for you to come up, but the hospital doesn’t allow visitors.” The sound of Dustin’s voice was sweet music to Seth’s ears. “This is supposed to be a veterinary clinic. Their secret wouldn’t last long with humans traipsing in and out, visiting.”
Seth sighed. “You’re right, but I’m dying to see you.”
“Yeah, I’d like to see you too, but a man driving up from Georgia to visit a wild animal involved in a hay-baler accident would look too suspicious. We’ve got to keep our secrets.”
“But I’m just one man. No one would notice.”
“Maybe not, but if they let you visit, then the hospital would have to change their rules, and families would start flocking in by the dozens. And some shifters have very large families.”
Yeah. That was Dustin, the voice of reason; a trait Seth believed made him an ideal second-in-command.
But didn’t help at all with Seth’s desire to see Dustin, hold him.
“Anyway, I’ll be home in a few days, I’m told. In the meantime….” Dustin lowered his voice to a seductive murmur. “What ’cha wearing?”
Seth crept down the hallway to his bedroom, even though Monica wasn’t due for lessons for a few hours, too busy helping the temporary doctor fill Dustin’s shoes in town. He lay back on the bed, popped the top button on his shorts, and eased the zipper down. “Just a pair of cut-off blue jeans.”
A groan emerged from the phone. “Good. If I were there, I’d run my hands all over your body. You do it for me.”
Seth activated the speaker function and placed his cellphone beside him on the bed. He slid his fingers over his stomach, less pudgy now than it had been before he began doing physical labor on the farm. He reached a nipple, giving a quick flick. The nub stiffened.
Oh, damn. He needed Dustin’s hands, not his own. “How about you? Are you naked?”
“Oh yeah,” came the breathy reply. “And I’ve got about a half hour before they bring lunch.”
Seth hadn’t thought of the possibility of someone walking in on Dustin. It worried him and excited him at the same time. “I want to be in you,” Seth said, voice gone husky. “Wet your finger and play with your hole.”
A sharp gasp reached Seth’s ears. He ran a lazy hand up and down his erect shaft. “Good. Now, stroke yourself with your other hand. Imagine it’s my hand, that I’m stroking you as I push in.”
Dustin and Seth both groaned. “Damn, you’re tight,” Seth improvised, locking down a clenching grip on himself. He pushed into his fist, imagining Dustin’s pucker flaring to let him in.
He increased his speed, pressure already starting to build. Behind his closed eyelids, he watched his cock disappear inside Dustin, and then reappear again when he drew back.
“Damn, Seth. I want you here.”
“And I want to be there. Cup your balls and stroke yourself. I want to hear you come.” Seth words came out a bit breathy.
He’d save any embarrassment for later. Never had he even dreamed of phone sex like this before. So out of character. Or maybe, out of character for who he used to be, before Dustin came back into his life.
He panted, pumping into his fist and imagining Dustin doing the same, miles away.
“I want to fuck you, Dustin. I want to pound your ass. I want to feel you come, your muscles gripping me, milking me.” Seth shut up, too far gone to form words.
“Harder,” Dustin pleaded over the phone. “Fuck me harder. Make me feel it.”
Conversation changed to grunts and profanity, the sounds of Dustin getting closer.
So good, so damn good, just to hear him, know he’d be okay, they’d be together again… Oh, God! Oh, God! Seth cried out, “Dustin!” Cum spattered his bare chest. He lay on the bed, heart hammering in his ears.
A moment later, Dustin shouted “Oh damn!” loudly, even with the speaker away from Seth’s ear.
Seth continued to convulse even after he’d quit spurting. Damn. Just… damn. He grinned the grin of the sated. “I can’t wait until we do that for real.”
“Heh. You’ve given me added incentive to heal quicker.”
Heal. Yes, Dustin needed to heal from injuries that could have taken his life, and come home. To Seth. “I love you, Dustin.”
“Love you too. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”
Seth drove his aunt’s bush hog the final lap around field, ensuring no tall grass remained for predators to hide in. A new electrified fence marked the edges of the passel’s gathering place, strung between cedar posts with a little help from the Johnson boys. Seth had also lined up interviews for more full-moon guards, and a game warden to advise him on preventing owl attacks. Now all he needed was a steady job to bring in income, for he felt funny spending family money. He might need the McDaniel legacy for the passel.
All in all, he didn’t think he’d done too badly for his first two weeks on the job as the Jack. He parked the tractor in the barn and went inside his house—his house—to fix dinner.
“I’ve got it!” he told Monica a few hours later over a dinner of pot roast, stewed potatoes, and green beans—with a fair imitation of Aunt Irene’s buttermilk biscuits, if he did say so himself. “What if I turn the place into a bed-and-breakfast and invite city shifters to come out and enjoy the full moon in the great outdoors? We can advertise at the conventions. Not only will the farm generate an income, we can engender a little goodwill with other changelings.” He also had his eye on a vacant storefront in a perfect location for a studio. It seemed his alternative family photos were a hit, and he’d already secured space at the Anaheim convention. He’d had no idea the money to be made from unconventional family photos. Not to mention the nice check he’d received from a conservation magazine for pictures of the shifted Johnson boys. That reminded him. He needed to talk with Andy. An outdoorsman’s e-zine offered good money for candid fox photos.
“Oh, speaking of other shifters—” Monica turned her lips up in her most evil grin. “I heard today Mr. Big Shot Junior Timmerman is moving to New York.” She pronounced the town “New Yawk.”
“Really? Why?” Not that Seth wasn’t eternally grateful.
“Seems Widow Pickens called him out for running away and leaving the passel defenseless, and his new boyfriend gave him an ultimatum: move to the city, or else.”
Seth nearly choked on his green beans. “Michael? And Junior?” Damn. He’d hope they’d distract each other, but he’d never dreamed they’d turn out to be more than a brief fling. Didn’t Junior look down on Michael for not being a possum shifter? If so, Seth might have to confront the man. Then again, if Junior planned to move to New York for Michael, they must have started something serious.
“Yep.”
Seth hadn’t seen that one coming. “Ha! That’s a match made someplace unpleasant.” He hoped for Michael’s sake that Junior learned some manners. Then again, why did he even care? Unless he’d developed some kind of residual, “one of mine to take care of” thing for his ex, like he had for the passel members. Once he’d duty-bound himself to worry about a town full of people, what was one more? Well, with the exception of Junior, who could damned well take care of himself.
Seth and Monica shared a grin and some homemade apple pie.
After they’d washed and put away the dishes, they headed out to the front yard for Monica to share more possum wisdom. Seth scrunched up his face, trying to squeeze his muscles into possum shape.
“Not like that, you moron! What’re you trying to do, bust a spleen?” The only woman in Seth’s life stood, hands on hips, a glower pasted on her face. “Reach down inside, like you do for power, only instead of concentrating on your hand, send it evenly over your body. And don’t scowl! You look constipated.”
Seth focused on sending out the energy more uniformly. His inner critter laughed—he swatted it with a metaphysical hand.
One of the Johnson boys (Eddy?) came trotting across the yard, wearing bright orange board shorts and a dingy white T-shirt. “Nah, that’s wrong. Imagine you’re playing Skyrim.” He held out his hands, miming working a game controller. “You know how your whole body tenses up? That’s the way to do it.”
A second Johnson appeared, dressed too similar to the first for clothing to be much help with identification. Was this one Freddy or Teddy? Seth considered labeling them for future reference. “Don’t listen to him, he’s an idiot! Imagine you’re listening to heavy metal and the music kinda vibrates through you.”
“They’re both wrong. What you gotta do is meditate, blank your mind.” That advice came from the third brother, now emerging from the trees separating Johnson land from McDaniel.
“I’ll show you how to meditate!” the second shouted, grabbing his sibling around the waist and slinging him to ground in a squirming mass of knobby elbows and knees.
“Fight, fight,” taunted the first, taking a flying leap to join the heap of twisting bodies and hurled insults.
Monica rolled her eyes heavenward. “As I was saying….”
Seth raised a finger. “A moment, please.” Although he had no idea what Skyrim was, he closed his eyes, raised his air guitar, and belted out a rousing rendition of “Back in Black.” He hit the ground a moment later, with a tiny mouth full of pointy teeth trying to sing “Ba-a-ah-ack!”
“Hey! You did it!” Monica exclaimed. She turned her attention to wrestling the boys apart.
“I am the possum!” Seth crowed, struggling to extricate himself from his jeans. “I changed at will!” He rewarded himself by wading into a patch of azalea bushes in search of prey, and was crunching his third cricket when his ears perked up to the sound of tires on the driveway. He froze momentarily, then waddled out from under the shrubs, rolling his view up, way up, to Dustin’s truck.
“Dustin!” he squeaked, waddling as fast as his nonaerodynamic body allowed.
Andy opened the driver’s door and stepped out. Seth stopped in his tracks, smile falling, until….
“Seth?” Dustin rounded the hood from the passenger side.
“Okay, boys, time to go home,” Seth heard Monica say from a million miles away. Seth sat back on his haunches, imagining AC/DC in concert and him with front-row seats. The next minute, he was wiping assorted cricket parts from his lips as he closed the distance between himself and the man he’d worried he’d never see again.
Dustin met Seth halfway, attacking Seth’s mouth with his own. “Mmmmm…,” he exclaimed as he came for air. “Cricket!”
Chapter 22
Eighteen Months Later
“Don’t make me come over there!” Seth aimed his best “the Jack” scowl at the trio of teens vamping it up on the football field—with blatant disregard for the rest of the team.
“He started it!” Eddy yelled, reaching around Teddy to smack the back of Freddy’s head with a football helmet.
“Did not!” Freddy shot back.
“Did too!” chorused Eddy and Teddy.
“I don’t care who started it—I’m ending it!” Seth backed away from his tripod, hands on his hips. To the other students in the group Fighting Possums photo, he probably appeared to glower. However, goose bumps rose on the arms of the Johnson boys and a few other players, a strong enough warning to ba
ck down.
“Oh! I’m just in time, I see,” the nearly deaf Widow Pickens shouted, beaming up at Seth from her vantage point more than a foot and a half below him. She placed a hand on his arm, a beatific smile adding more wrinkles to her dried apple of a face.
Seth huffed. The last thing he needed was his own personal ninety-year-old fangirl. “Now, now, Ms. Pickens,” he said in his most placating tone, wresting her hand from his arm, “not in front of the kiddies. What brings you here, anyway?”
“How many times must I tell you to call me Estelle?” She batted her lashes. “My granddaughter is one of the seniors you’re taking pictures of today. She spilled spaghetti sauce on her blouse at lunch and asked me to bring her another.” Estelle held up a folded garment for Seth’s inspection. “But please, continue, I wouldn’t want to hold you up.” She nodded toward the football team, gathered for their yearbook photo.
“Thank you.” Seth bent to peer into his camera. A hand swatted his ass.
“Oops, must’ve slipped.” The old lady cackled her way across the field.
The Johnson boys, amply chastened by their leader’s power play, resumed their positions within the lineup, allowing Seth to finish the photo shoot.
The coach approached after Seth snapped the last shot. “Okay, seniors. Now go get prettied up for your pictures.”
Seth packed up his equipment, lugging several heavy cases to the Thurman County High auditorium to render yearbook likenesses. Easy money, and not a bad job—until….
“I can’t believe my grandmother brought this old thing!”
Thoughts of the family waiting for him at home allowed Seth to survive the next few hours. The Johnson boys loaded his SUV and he set off, pleased with the fruits of his labor.
He stopped by his studio next to the public library/post office and dropped off his equipment. Before powering down his computer for the day, he took a tiny little peek at his profile on “All About Me.” Oh my! More than one hundred comments on his latest uploaded pic. Unsurprising—everyone loved baby pictures, it seemed. But… he nearly choked when he noticed a familiar icon and a message stating:
