And yet he was looking at me like I was the best thing he’d ever seen.
Then he looked away for a second, and when he looked back at me, his brows had lowered and his jaw was set. Those blue eyes had frozen hard and the combination of that glare, and his monstrous size, almost made me back away.
But then, as he looked into my eyes, I saw the lust flash again for a second, scalding hot and primal. In an instant, it was buried again and the glare was back.
I thought of his dog, growling at me in the alley, trying to scare me away.
He reached down and offered me his hand. I stared at it stupidly, then reached up and took it. I was hoisted upright, so fast and effortlessly it was like being in an express elevator. God, he was strong. And his hand was so big, engulfing mine in its warmth, his skin rough and calloused. When he released my hand, I could feel my skin tingling. I couldn’t explain it, but I wanted more of that touch, more of that roughness against me. I wanted to mold myself to him and have him crush my softness against him. What the hell is the matter with me?
He looked at his dog again, at the bandages on its legs. Then he looked at me. “That was you?” Just the bare minimum of words and even they came out haltingly. Like he hadn’t spoken in a really long time.
I nodded and explained how I’d found his dog and treated it. And he just stood there, staring down at me, listening. Really listening, like he didn’t want to miss a word. And the longer it went on, the more I saw those cornflower-blue eyes soften. He started to lean in, millimeter by millimeter.
I finished my story but he said nothing, just kept staring down at me. The dog bounded over to me and circled around and around my legs, pushing up against me so hard it almost knocked me over. I put a hand down and let it trail through the dog’s thick fur, but I couldn’t look away from those blue eyes. Every time I looked into them, I felt that slow, aching vibration. Like he had one of those big, calloused fingers resting right on that guitar string inside me and he was just caressing it, both of us unsure but both of us feeling how loaded with tension it was.
He finally looked away. He glanced at the street, the passing cars, the skyscrapers, as if suddenly remembering where he was, and I saw his body tense. I thought of some huge animal, prowling its concrete cell at the zoo. He didn’t belong here.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. He turned to go and a sudden, cold panic washed through me. I’ll never see him again! I blinked. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d only just met him!
The dog, I told myself. I’d miss the big fluffball. That was all it was.
He took a step away.
“I’m Bethany.” It was out before I realized my mouth was moving. I cringed. Idiot! What if he just ignored me and walked on? He’s way out of your league.
But he turned back to me. And the shock I saw in his eyes was the good kind. Like he was surprised I’d be into him. Something in my chest lifted and bobbed like a balloon.
For a second, it was like he was battling with himself. Something powerful was trying to make him turn away and march off: he’d glance away from me and those big shoulders would tense as if he was about to turn...then he’d catch my eye again and it was like he...melted.
“Cal,” he said at last. He nodded at the dog. “That’s Rufus.”
Cal? Short for...Caleb? It made me think of log cabins and covered wagons. I liked it. And I liked his voice. Big, like him, and low...I didn’t just hear it, I felt it in my chest. The men I met in Seattle used their voices as weapons, sweet and cajoling and then, if you dared to say no to them, bitter and vicious. And all the while, they stared at my chest. But Cal looked me right in the eye and although he still spoke slowly, like he was out of practice, he talked straight. Each word was like a rough-hewn hunk of sandstone that he chiseled out of the ground and slammed down on the ground between us. There. That’s what I said. Take it or leave it.
“How’d you lose him?” I asked.
The man frowned at Rufus. “He ran after a cat.” Rufus did his best to look innocent. “He’d never seen one before.”
I stared at Rufus. “He’d never seen a cat before?!”
His words seemed to be coming a little easier, now, like he was loosening up. He looked east, towards the edge of the city and beyond. “We live...a long way out. Just here for a day.”
How far into the country did you have to live to never see a cat? Even people on farms had cats, right? Who was this guy? His clothes weren’t shabby but they were faded from the sunlight, patched and repatched where they’d been torn. I looked down at my sweater and jeans. I’d bought both on the internet just a few months ago. They were dirt cheap, but I only gave them another week before they started to fall apart.
Cal looked again at the bandages on Rufus’s legs. “How’d you learn to do that?”
“Med school.”
“You’re a doctor?”
I looked away, shame heating my face. “I was going to be.” I caught sight of the call center behind me, reflected in a puddle. I nodded over my shoulder at it. “I work there, now.”
He kept looking at me and I could feel the concern, the questions he wanted to ask. But I wouldn’t meet his eyes and, at last, he dutifully looked at the call center. “No windows?”
“Yeah, they just keep the lights on inside 24/7. You don’t know what time of day it is. Stops people getting sleepy on the night shift.”
He took a half step forward. With his size, it should have felt scary but it didn’t. He loomed over me almost protectively and I felt an unexpected rush of warmth. “Ain’t right, them cooping people up like that,” he said. “What do you do in there?”
“It’s a call center. You know when you call the helpdesk because there’s something wrong with your computer? That’s us.”
He just blinked at me.
He doesn’t use a computer?! “We help people fix the problem.” I grimaced. “There’s a lot of yelling.”
His whole body stiffened and if it was possible, he seemed to grow even bigger. Those deep blue eyes flashed, like he wanted to personally hunt down every last person who’d ever yelled at me.
And I got a hint, just for a split second, of what it might be like to feel safe. And it felt so good, my chest went tight and I got a lump in my throat.
Don’t be stupid. He was a complete stranger and he lived hundreds of miles away, probably in a different state. I made my voice cheery and light. “It was good to meet you, Cal.” I scratched Rufus behind the ears and he pushed up against me, his tail thumping the sidewalk happily. “You too, Rufus.”
But when I looked up at Cal, he was still staring at me. And as soon as our eyes locked, I felt that string inside me pull tight, ready to sing. My fake lightness fell away. I swallowed.
He leaned an inch closer, looming over me again—
Then he looked away. And whatever he wanted to say, instead he muttered, “Don’t let ‘em use you, Bethany.”
He turned on his heel and strode off, his long legs eating up the distance. Rufus looked between us uncertainly. He trotted after Cal, then stopped and looked back again. He kept doing it, all the way down the street.
Then they turned the corner and were gone. And I became aware of an ache inside, one I’d had for years but hadn’t ever acknowledged.
I’d glimpsed what I didn’t even know I’d been searching for.
And now I’d never see him again.
2
Cal
AS WE WALKED AWAY, I could see Rufus looking back over his shoulder at her. I had to force myself not to do the same.
When I was a teenager, growing up in the country, the posters on my wall were all from TV shows and movies set in cities. Cities were almost mythical places, all towering skyscrapers and cocktail parties, and the most fascinating part of them, for a teenage boy, was the women: sexy and sophisticated, gentle and refined. They were so different to the women around me, women who’d been raised to shuck wheat and milk cows. I knew a city woman wouldn’t last a week in the
world I lived in, but that didn’t stop me from constructing a million teenage fantasies about bedding one.
Bethany brought back all those teenage longings. She was from a world so different to mine, it might as well have been Mars: WiFi and electric cars and ordering things on a computer and having it delivered to your door in a couple of hours. She was soft and delicate in a way I found hypnotic. Every part of her: the sneakers with the blindingly white rubber, like they’d never seen mud. The jeans that hadn’t been made for toughness, but to hug that wonderful ass and curving hips. The sweater that wasn’t just a practical layer, for warmth, but had little gold threads woven into the cranberry-colored wool, creating little sparkling tracks that arched like contour lines as they reached the hills and valleys of her breasts.
She had hair as jet black and glossy as a stretch limousine and it fell in thick, glossy waves halfway down her back. When she’d crashed into me, the tumbling locks had brushed my chin and it had been so silky soft, and smelled so good, that all I’d wanted to do was bury my nose in it. Her eyes were a warm, rich hazel, and her mouth...hypnotically soft, wide lips. And when she smiled, it was with one of these lopsided, shy little grins that was goddamn adorable.
The best thing about Bethany, though? Her curves. If I hadn’t been so held by those big brown eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to stop my gaze rolling down the sweet slopes of her body. Those full, lush breasts pushing out the front of that cranberry sweater...the sweep of her waist that I wanted to follow with my palm, in and then gloriously out to a mouthwatering bounty of hips and an ass I needed to grab hold of right now. She looked old-fashioned, in a way I couldn’t put into words.
Her skin was milky-pale, like she’d never spent a day outside in the sun. And when I’d taken her hand to pull her up, her fingers had been so amazingly soft and soothing on my big, calloused paws. I couldn’t get enough of that smooth softness. I kept thinking back to the glimpses her sweater had revealed: the elegant curve of her throat, down to her collarbone; the top of the soft valley between her breasts. I wanted to start just below her jaw and kiss downwards, exploring her with my lips, feeling her writhe against me. I wanted to see all of her, wanted to hook my hands under that sweater and drag it up and off her, run my hands all over her. I couldn’t help but have visions of her nipples, imagining them darkly pink against the whiteness, rising into peaks beneath my thumbs. Dammit, I wanted to push her up against a tree and…I gave a little growl of lust, just imagining it.
She was the most feminine woman I’d ever met. Not girly, not giggly and look-at-me, but soft and sweet and sexual, a femininity that was completely intoxicating. There was this word I couldn’t get out of my head, from some book my mom read to me as a kid: entranced. I was entranced by her. I felt like Rufus when he chases after a butterfly.
When she told me what they had her doing, being a chew-toy for customers to savage, I’d felt something rise up inside me I hadn’t felt for a long time. A deep, protective urge. There’d been a second, as I looked down into those big brown eyes, when I just wanted to scoop her up into my arms.
And there was something else. Beyond the need to run my hands over those fine curves. Beyond the urge to protect her.
I’d felt myself react to her in a way I didn’t think I could, anymore. In a way I hadn’t for a long time. I’d felt this pull, way down deep and stronger than any river’s current.
But then reality returned and I scowled and marched faster down the street, Rufus trotting by my side. I didn’t deserve someone like her, after what I’d done.
I was a monster. And monsters belong in the woods.
We’d only come to Seattle for the funeral. The idea was to be in the city for less than an hour. We’d found the cemetery and stood there in the rain as the casket was lowered. Only a few other people had been there: his relatives, I guess. They’d glanced curiously at the giant in the plaid shirt with his dog, but no one had plucked up the courage to talk to me and as soon as I’d paid my respects, we headed home. I didn’t want to go to some reception or wake and try to make small talk, or, worse, have to lie to Shawn’s folks about what he and I used to do for a living.
Except I never could navigate in cities, with their artificial grid of streets that all look the same. On the way out of Seattle, I’d gotten lost in an industrial area and then, while I was stuck at a stoplight, Rufus had seen a stray cat and scrambled out of the window to chase after it. Even after searching for him all night, I hadn’t been able to find him. I’d been worried sick.
But thanks to Bethany, we’d been reunited. Now we could go home and we never needed to come to the city again.
A guy in a suit appeared from around the corner and strolled towards us. He did a double-take at my size. Then he looked me in the eyes and—
I don’t mean to glare. It just sort of happens. I don’t want to talk to people, don’t want to be around people. People, and society: roads and cars and schools and adverts, normal life...all that stuff just reminds me of what I am. Reminds me that I don’t belong in that normal, polite world anymore...and why.
The guy’s eyes went wide with fear and he looked away, then crossed the street. Most people did the same.
But not Bethany. She hadn’t been scared of me. Even when I’d tried to scare her away.
Maybe because, deep down, I hadn’t wanted to.
I pushed the thought away as we reached the borrowed pickup. I climbed in and Rufus leapt into the passenger seat and put his head out of the window. I threw it into gear and we sped off towards the interstate.
But as I sped past the city limits sign, I felt that pull again, stronger than ever. I glanced at the glittering skyscrapers in the rearview mirror. Bethany….
I crushed the feelings down inside.
Monsters belong in the woods.
I’d never see Bethany again.
3
Bethany
Six Months Later
“Bethany,” whispered Rachel, “Will you take this one?”
I looked across and saw her eyes shining with tears. I nodded quickly. And then, before I’d even had time to mentally brace, he was in my ear in crystal-clear clarity. Male, forties, East Coast. I could almost feel the spittle hitting my cheek. “You make this fucking thing work, NOW! I’m losing money, standing here, don’t you understand? What the fuck are you people doing? Answer me, you bitch!”
The others know that I’m good at calming people. So when they get a really angry call and they just can’t deal with it, they pass it to me. And that’s okay. I’d rather take the call than see Rachel reduced to tears by the guy.
But it means that I spend my day as a verbal punching bag. And there’s only so many times you can be told you’re worthless before it begins to soak into your psyche, like rain leaching into concrete and weakening it. Weirdly, it wouldn’t be so bad if we were face-to-face with the customers. Then they’d have to look us in the eye as they yell and most people aren’t that brave. But when we’re just an anonymous voice at the end of the phone, they get to take all their frustrations out on us: their cheating wife, their money problems, their sports team losing.
And we can’t answer back. We can’t get mad. The callers hold our jobs in their hands because if our average customer satisfaction rating drops too low, we’re fired. So when they yell at us, or tell us they hope we die, or heavy-breathe and ask us what sort of panties we have on, we count to three and ask, “Is there anything else I can help you with, today?”
This is my life, for twelve hours each day. Two two minute bathroom breaks. A fifteen-minute lunch break. If you’re late back it’s a warning. A second offense and you’re fired. If I pull a double shift, it’s twenty-four hours straight. Sometimes, I stumble out into the parking lot and I’m not sure if it’s 8 am or 8 pm.
After ten minutes of soaking up his rage, I finally managed to get the caller to calm down enough to reset his system: a five-second process. As soon as it booted back up, he hung up on me. I let out a sigh of exh
austion and put my forehead in my hands. Ten seconds. I’d give myself ten seconds before I answered another call.
And I knew just how I wanted to spend those ten seconds. I inhaled slowly, imagining I could still smell the clean, outdoor scent of him. Six months on, I still couldn’t get Cal out of my mind. He was so different from any man I’d ever met. Wild, like a white-water river, ready to suck you in and carry you off, or a mountain so huge and steep it’s said to be unscalable, its peak disappearing into the clouds. That voice, the words heavy and solid as rocks, their edges rough and unpolished. But with that glorious country warmth, like the sun had been soaking into the stone all day and all you wanted to do was press up against them.
I’d reacted to him in a way I never had with anyone else, his physical presence so intense that it seemed to reach inside me and touch my soul, making my whole body quiver and sing.
I didn’t understand it because there was something deeply intimidating about him. It wasn’t just his size or the way he glared. He felt...dangerous. Not in the way some guys are dangerous, all loud and angry and spoiling for a fight, a firework that can go off at any time. Cal was more like a gun you know is loaded or a knife you know is razor-sharp. He just stood there, calm and quiet. But something in his eyes hinted that he could take on an army, if he needed to.
I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. Because when he’d looked at me, the hardness in his eyes had just melted away. He might be big, might even be dangerous...but it didn’t feel as if he’d ever hurt me, or anyone who didn’t deserve it. And when I told him about the call center and his eyes had flared with anger… at that moment, I’d felt protected in a way I never had before. I wished he was there now. I imagined pressing my cheek against soft plaid and warm, hard muscle, sliding my arms around him and snuggling close—
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