by Julia Kent
“What about us?”
“You ganged up on me.”
Trevor held up his open palm to me, over Darla’s body. We high-fived. “Damn right we did,” I said, taking a long, deep breath in and pulling her closer.
“Assholes.”
“You liked it, though,” I noted.
“Too much.”
Trevor and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
Three years of being together and we could find new ways to have fun in bed.
“I’ll get you back,” she warned, her voice fading as she wound down to fall asleep.
“Looking forward to it,” I whispered in her ear, but she was already out.
CHAPTER FIVE
DARLA
Where are two good men when you need them for a hot, hardcore –
– shifter romance action scene?
What’d you think I was gonna say? I can get sex anytime I want. Getting help from Trevor and Joe blocking out a fight? That was way harder.
Mine were gone at some mini Comic-Con in the area, probably staring at Wonder Woman’s titties and comparing them to mine. I was at the end of one of my books, editing it, and I needed to figure out a few of the physical details. Visualizing it and then writing it was so much easier with my men helping.
No such luck today.
I needed two men, fast.
Meanwhile, whenever I got stuck on a scene I had two go-tos: masturbate, or go out for donuts.
What? Every famous writer does this. At least, that’s what Amy told me. Whenever she got writer’s block, Margaret Mitchell masturbated or ate a donut, right?
Works for me.
But now I was kinda depleted on the sexual side and really, grotesquely full on the stomach side. I mean, who eats just one donut? That’s like having only one orgasm.
If you’re gonna have one, might as well go for whatever it takes until you’re sated.
I gotta admit, I was starting to doubt myself with this writing stuff. Almost finished with book two, endlessly editing book one. Amy said they were good, but what if she was wrong? Was I wasting my time on this while I could be getting us ready for our Vegas gig?
Maybe I was just living in a fantasyland. No, not the one where two hot rock stars/law school students fucked me four to five nights a week, declared their love for me, and made me feel important. Already got that.
I meant the one where people actually wanted to read the shit that comes out of my head. Mama always told me my imagination was like the town recycling center: plenty of good stuff in there, but Lordy, you got to sort through a lot of crap to find the treasure.
How, exactly, do a bear and a wolf fight? Both have sharp claws and go for the throat. Both will bite. Bears are bigger in terms of sheer size, but a wolf is more nimble. Agile. I was trying to imagine it, the characters going at it, when the doorbell rang.
I ignored it.
This ain’t Peters, Ohio. In Boston, you don’t answer the door, welcome the person in, offer them some iced tea or coffee, listen to their sales pitch for magazine subscriptions, and end up learning you’re second cousins twice removed, connected by Doc Oglethorpe or the Apostolic pastor from 1986 no one talks about above a whisper.
In the city, you ignore it. People who dare to show up unannounced don’t deserve to be acknowledged. They’re violating social norms and shunning is the best way to handle them.
That’s what Joe says.
Ding!
I looked at the buzzer and wondered. Package delivery, maybe? Normally, I’d get an email or a text if a friend was coming over. Josie still hadn’t answered any of my emails, calls, or texts, so maybe it was her?
Damn. Curiosity killed the cat.
I pushed the buzzer button. “Yes?”
“Hello. Is Mr. Connor there?” The man pronounced Trevor’s last name like he was reading it from our nameplate.
“Yes.” That’s a lie, but when you live in the city, you don’t admit to being a woman all alone in your apartment when a man you don’t know is asking questions.
“Are you Miss Jennings?”
Miss? “Yes.”
“May we come up and speak with you? I’m Elder Yanklos and this is Elder Jonney.”
“Elder?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t need elder services here, sir. We’re in our twenties.”
“No, ma’am. We –”
I stood up straight. Ma’am? I just got called ma’am and Miss? Who in the hell were these people?
“We would like to talk to you about the Bible.”
Wait. Wait a minute. Elder? Two of them? Bible?
“Are you Jehovah’s Witnesses?” I asked. “Because I am not giving up birthday and Christmas presents for Jesus. Nope.”
“No, ma’am.” The guy was starting to sound a little weirded out. Good. The faster they left, the better. “We are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”
“That’s a really long name for a church. How do you fit that on a sign?” I knew that they were Mormons. Just thought I’d pull their legs a little.
Silence.
“Miss Jennings, we would really like to come up and talk with you and Mr. Connor. We have some information that could be very helpful to your life, if you have the time. Or you could come down here and – ”
“Are you both men?” I interrupted, an idea forming in my mind. Probably a bad one, but hey. A bad idea is better than no idea, right?
Let’s just go with it.
“Excuse me?”
“Men. Are you both men?”
“Oh! Yes.”
“And you say you’d like to come up here and help me with my life?”
“Absolutely!”
“You know, I am having this problem I could use some help with.” I wished the building owner had installed video cameras. I wondered what the Mormons looked like. Didn’t really matter. Two warm bodies willing to move just right was all I needed.
“Please let us help!” The guy sounded almost orgasmic at the thought of getting in my apartment and talking about Jesus to me. For a moment, I wavered. I mean, I don’t need more Jesus talk. You grow up where I did and you get more Jesus than you ever need.
On the other hand, two men to help me through writer’s block when I was all out of donuts and my rabbit was out of batteries...
“Come on up.” I buzzed. I mean, hey.
Sometimes opportunity literally knocks.
Two young men – younger than me, for sure – arrived at my door, a spring in their step and a glow in their eyes. With super-short hair cut like the haircut my grandpa wore in the 1950s, and wearing white shirts and ties, they were just so clean, I bet I could’ve put on a white glove, run it along their bare skin, and they would squeak.
“Come on in,” I said. “It ain’t much, but it’s home.” I hadn’t thought about the state of the apartment when I told them to come up, but I figured it was on them. They want to spread Jesus, then Jesus gets me as I am, raw and real and full of so much sin the Pope would need to bless the entire Atlantic Ocean for my baptism and it still wouldn’t take.
“Is your husband home?” one of them said. He wore a nametag that said Elder Yanklos. Small, wiry guy with really clear skin, broad cheekbones, and bulging biceps that stood out compared to a rather slim body.
Plus, he was balding, with the growth pattern of early hair loss. He shaved his head. You don’t see too many bald Mormons, for sure, and especially guys who look like they’re still under twenty-one.
“My husband?” Talk about fictional characters...
“Mr. Connor? His name was on the buzzer.” Joe never wanted his name on the placard – said it gave him more privacy.
“We’re not married.”
The men blushed and looked down at their feet.
“He’s my brother. My half brother. My brother from another mother,” I said quickly.
It was like watching the heads of sunflowers as the sun rose. They looked up at me, smilin
g away. Meanwhile, my soul was damned for all eternity because I was lying.
But that ship sailed so long ago, it might as well be the Titanic.
I walked them into the living room and motioned for them to sit. They’d only get a few minutes of that, because I was already eyeing them, deciding how to steer the conversation to the topic of getting a wolf shifter and a bear shifter in an erotic romance novel to fight to the death.
Bet they see this all the time.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked, wondering why they were so concerned with Trevor being home.
They looked like I offered them rat poison. “No, ma’am. We don’t drink coffee.” One of them looked at the other with a smug expression, as if they’d passed some kinda test.
“Tea?”
“No, ma’am. We don’t drink caffeinated drinks at all.”
“No tea? No coffee? That’s part of the religion?”
They were silent.
“Well, screw that. You lost me there already. I’ll roast in hell with Satan while sipping my latte. Sorry.”
They looked a little scared. Damn. I didn’t want to scare them off quite yet. They were useful. One of them was nice and round, a big guy who, frankly, looked like he’d be real popular on a gay dating site for bears. Big brown eyes flecked with auburn around the edges and a nice mink-colored tint to his hair.
The other one looked like he had a pole shoved up his ass so high, he could hang a flag on it through his nostril, but wore a friendly smile.
“Wait. Can you drink iced tea? Iced coffee? Like, where’s the line? Why not go right up to it and let your toes touch it?”
I could tell Elder Yanklos was tempted. So tempted. Elder Jonney caught his eye and flashed him a dark look, a clear no if I ever seen one.
“Is there anything you can drink? I wish I had cocoa or cider,” I said, trying to be hospitable.
“Oh! We can drink those. But water would be fine,” Elder Yanklos said quickly.
“What else can’t you have in your religion?” I asked. “Can you drink alcohol?”
They shook their heads.
“Premarital sex?”
They gasped… and shook their heads. Guess that meant I could cross off my fisting question, then.
“I guess you can’t fuck a chicken, then, can you?”
The word “fuck” made them both gasp.
“That’s illegal!” Elder Yanklos murmured.
But notice how he didn’t say the church banned it?
“Can you smoke?”
“Tobacco is strictly forbidden.”
“I meant weed.”
“Why would you smoke a weed?” They looked at each other, deeply confused.
I grinned.
This was gonna be fun.
“I meant marijuana.”
“Oh, no,” they said in unison. “Absolutely not.”
“How do you have fun?”
“We have lots of fun!” Elder Jonney said, giving Elder Yanklos a look that said, Here we go. I felt bad. I needed to open my mind a bit here.
I stood to go into the kitchen and ran the tap to make two glasses of water. Least I could offer them something for the service they were about to perform for me.
Even if they didn’t know it yet.
“We go to church. We have pot lucks. We go to school and learn new languages. We –”
“You ever go to plays? Musicals?”
“Oh, yes!”
Aha.
“You ever perform in plays or musicals?”
Elder Jonney sat up and batted his eyelashes. No, really. The man batted his eyelashes like he either had a dopamine problem or he was practicing for a drag show. “Actually, I was the lead in my university production of Our Town.”
“You’re old enough to go to college?” He looked about seventeen.
“I am twenty-one years old,” Elder Jonney announced.
“You still in school?”
“I have three more years at BYU.”
“At Boston University? Great school. Congratulations.”
He soured slightly, giving me the look of someone who’d been through this before. “BYU. Brigham Young. Not Boston University.”
“Oh. So you perform! In plays!”
“Yes.”
“Bet you’re really good at playacting.”
Elder Jonney took a long drink of the glass of water I offered him. “I don’t want to be prideful, but I did win a cast award for that production.”
“You should be proud!” I crowed. “Someone who can crawl into another person’s mind must have a deep streak of empathy and compassion. Seems to me like the same qualities that make for a good missionary make for a good actor.”
The man didn’t just beam. He became a full-blown spotlight, the kind the car dealerships in Ohio would shine up into the sky when they had a big nighttime sale.
“Why, thank you, Miss Jennings. I am just doing the Lord’s work.”
“Does that include helping me?”
“Absolutely,” Elder Yanklos interjected, looking a bit nervous, as if he wasn’t pulling his weight. He looked around the living room. “Where is Mr. Connor? When we buzzed, you said he was home?”
“Oh,” I replied, almost as nervous suddenly, caught straight up in a lie. “I thought he was here. But he’ll be back any minute.”
The two gave each other an alarmed look, clearly struggling. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be here if I was alone? Or maybe they wanted a man here? I hurried up and got to my point before they could say anything.
“I am a writer,” I started, the words still sounding very, very weird coming out of my mouth. Kinda like Elder Jonney being worried about being seen as prideful for telling me about his acting skills. Huh.
“What do you write?” Elder Jonney asked politely, looking at the door as if willing Trevor to appear.
Well, shit. I wasn’t about to tell the truth, and since I’d sinned more than enough for one lifetime and certainly my sinning was so, uh… prolific, I just went ahead and kept lying.
“I write about animals.”
“You’re a nature writer?”
“Sure.” Let’s just go with that.
“How can we help you?”
“I’m trying to write a scene with a bear and a wolf in it. But they are also men.”
“Men and animals?” Elder Yanklos narrowed his eyes at me. “Like… a werewolf?”
“Exactly.”
“Werewolves aren’t real.”
“It’s, uh, for a dramatic opening. You know, lead with something entertaining before you hook them into paying attention to the nonfiction.”
“I like it. Like we were taught – give people an interesting story to make them feel at ease.”
I thought of the gory fight between Harley, my rabid werewolf, and Jack, my standup physician bear. “Yep. Exactly like that,” I agreed.
“What do you need?”
“Your bodies.”
The uncomfortable silence that followed involved negative eye contact. Don’t tell me that can’t happen.
It did.
“I need you to take your place over here, Elder Yanklos.” I touched his shoulder lightly and was surprised to find him loose and relaxed. You’d think someone so uptight, who spent the summer of their twenty-first year not drinking, not fucking, and not even consuming coffee while going door to door to convert people to a religion full of nothing but nope would be a bit more tense.
He pulled away quickly, though. Oops. Maybe not touching was part of their religion. Or maybe I crossed a boundary. I resolved to do better.
Elder Yanklos stood next to the front door. “Like this?”
“Yes.” I had to stretch my imagination to turn him into Harley, a bald, tatted-up leader of a motorcycle gang full of wolves, who becomes rabid and goes after Jack-the-bear’s woman.
Like, taffy-stretch it.
Like, me-in-a-size-6-waistband stretch it.
But I did.
&nb
sp; “And you, Elder Jonney, come on over here and stand with me in between you two. You’re going to be attacked by Elder Yanklos, who is a wolf.”
“Why is he the wolf?” I could tell by his tone that Elder Jonney was not pleased.
I leaned in and whispered, “The bear wins.”
“Oh! Then, I mean, not that it matters, but...” Elder Jonney looked nervously around the room, his eyes returning over and over to his Bible, like a toddler exploring the world but returning to touch his mama every few minutes, as if she’s a charging station for independence. Maybe the elders here touched their Bibles to fill their Savior batteries.
“So Elder Yanklos, you get into fight mode, like you’re gonna throw a big punch right at Elder Jonney’s face. But don’t actually do it,” I added hastily.
“I would never!” he said, frowning in concentration. His thumb tucked into his fist and it was my turn to frown. Uncle Mike taught me when I was six years old that you never, ever tuck your thumb into your fist when you’re about to fight. One good punch and you could break it.
I was guessing Elder Yanklos wasn’t in the habit of fist fighting, though.
“Now, Elder Jonney, you come rushing at him, like a big old bear all swollen and angry, ready to rip that wolf right off the woman he’s trying to defile.”
They both dropped their arms. “WHAT?” Masks of horror faced me.
“Trying to, I mean, the woman he’s trying to define. You know. Like an animal trying to figure out what a human is.”
They both relaxed. “That makes so much more sense.”
I grabbed a notepad and paper. What I wanted most was to take a picture of them, but somehow that felt like crossing a line. I was already pushing it. Didn’t want to be too bold.
I stared at them, narrowing my eyes, imagining them as wolf and bear, human men fighting for a woman.
I failed.
I tried again.
Strike two.
Really squinted, making a little grunting sound as I clenched my jaw and willed the scene to come to me.
“Is she constipated?” Elder Yanklos whispered to Elder Jonney.
“I’m not feeling it,” I admitted.
“Not feeling… what?”
“That you’re animals. Give me your primal, feral looks.”
