Bears of Burden: HUTCH

by Candace Ayers

  "To dinner," she reiterated. "I'll be there. What time?"

  "I haven't even given you my address yet," Donovan said, an amused smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

  "I'll meet you back here after classes. You're driving." She shrugged beneath his outstretched arm, and allowed him to continue to hold the door open for her as she left. Donovan leaned his head out of his office to watch her trot back down the hallway. When he turned, he noticed one of the older male professors had paused in coming out of the breakroom to scrutinize their exchange. Dr. Kilman, was it? Donovan flipped the other man a casual wave as he receded back into his office.

  The invitation had probably been a good idea, all things considered. The frequency with which Kira visited his office was starting to get noticed, and not in a good way.

  Donovan crossed back to his desk and unnecessarily straightened a stack of papers, whistling all the while. His pulse had started to speed the moment she agreed to have dinner with him, the same way it would have had a beautiful woman at the bar accepted his offer of a date. But this was not a date, and he was not meant to enjoy being in the company of his student this evening. Kira Bentley had a lot to learn about being a werewolf, and unless he wanted professors like Dr. Kilman hovering suspiciously outside his door, then this was the only conceivable way for Donovan to continue his lessons. They required complete privacy moving forward, like it or not… and Donovan was beginning to suspect that he liked it too much.

  I never asked to be bitten.

  The echo of her words yanked him from his thoughts, and his smile died instantly. Donovan threw the papers back down on his desk and dragged his hands through his hair. His happiness gave suddenly and viciously away to despair, and he crossed to the far side of the room. The calendar he had used to mark the days since the last full moon hung on the wall, right above where Kira sat, like a terrible clue waiting to be discovered.

  He tore it from the wall.

  CHAPTER 8

  Professor Donovan's—Sawyer's—apartment was significantly larger than the dorm room she shared with her roommate; all the same, the smallness of the space took Kira by surprise.

  "I guess they must not pay you very much," she noticed as she bent to take her shoes off in the entryway. Professor Donovan crossed to the kitchen and set an armful of groceries down on the counter. They had stopped off at the store first, and come away with items Kira would never have dreamed of putting on her own shopping list two weeks ago… breasts and ribs and flanks, all dressed in seeping blood-soaked butcher paper and tied off like nightmarish Christmas presents. They spent more time browsing the meat aisle than she had ever spent inside his classroom—a fact that Professor Donovan was all too happy to point out to her on their way back to his place.

  "Most of my money goes toward buying groceries," Donovan replied now to her comment about his living conditions, and Kira blushed to think of what his budget must have been now that he was buying for her. Well, it served him right, she thought—she had already spent half of the remaining balance on her student account buying his stupid overpriced sandwiches from the quad. "If you choose a life of professorship, this is what you have to look forward to," he continued. He held out his arms to encompass his domain, and Kira couldn't help but laugh a little at how proud he looked. She crossed in stocking feet to the kitchen and took a stool on the opposite side of the counter from him.

  "Now I know why you practically live in your office," she agreed as she surveyed the tiny living area. She could see the bathroom further down the hallway, right next door to an alcove that housed a washer and dryer, and a closed door across from these amenities which she could only assume was Professor Donovan's bedroom. She felt her curiosity immediately piqued, but tried to distract herself by helping him unpack the groceries. She hoped he hadn't noticed the way her eyes had lingered on the door.

  "It's better than having a roommate at my age," Donovan said. "Roommates are sort of out of the question, anyway, considering my affliction. I just have to live sparingly."

  "My roommate goes home every weekend," Kira mentioned. "But it's still been… difficult. I'm thinking about moving out of the dorms next semester to live on my own."

  "Probably a good idea," Professor Donovan said as he turned the stove on. "Even once I've taught you to control your shifts, you'll still want your privacy. Next semester."

  "I see what you're doing," Kira warned him. She had been the first one to bring up her nebulous next semester, of course, but Professor Donovan had latched onto it instantly. She played with the string tying one of the packages together until he took it away from her. "Professorship. Next semester."

  Donovan replaced the package he had whisked out from beneath her hands with a slim brown bottle. A wisp of carbon dioxide escaped out the neck of the freshly-opened beer. Kira's eyes widened. "Drink this," he ordered. "I like to maintain my reputation as a young, hip professor, and it will help you relax. I'm driving you home later, anyway."

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Kira raised the bottle hesitantly. It's not as if she had never had a beer before, but she wasn't much of a social drinker—she usually left that up to her roommate.

  "It's a terrible idea. Drink it anyway." Professor Donovan also had a beer in hand, which made her feel a bit better. Once he had laid a slab of seasoned meat out on the heating skillet, he turned back to her and leaned casually on the counter. Kira leaned forward as well. "To being cursed," he toasted as he raised his bottle to her. Kira clinked hers against it, and they both took a long, communal sip together. The richly bitter carbonated liquid raced down her throat and hit her empty stomach within seconds, and Kira pulled back with a wet gasp. She could feel her abdominal muscles already clenching at the invasion.

  "This was a terrible idea," she stated as she set the bottle down. Professor Donovan watched her with twinkling gray eyes. "Professor, I can't remember the last time I had anything to eat."

  "Which is why I'm only allowing you one until after dinner." He turned away from her once more to busy himself over the stovetop. "If you manage to keep solid food down, we can celebrate with another."

  The smell of sizzling meat hit her like a one-two punch, and Kira's mouth immediately started watering. It was the same reaction she had to the hot dog stands on the fun fair midway, and she felt no less guilty for it now. The vegetarian in her was mortified, but the carnivore—the wolf—was ravenous. She knew it was only a matter of time before the latter won.

  "So you eat meat and live alone," Kira mentioned as she took another tentative sip off the top of her beer. "What else do I need to know to be a successful werewolf?"

  "The only time you should ever need to shift completely is during a full moon." She watched her professor's broad-shouldered figure move about the kitchen industriously, and felt a tightening in her stomach that had nothing to do with how empty it was. Maybe it was the effects of the alcohol already hitting her, but she was suddenly aware of how intimate their current situation was. There had to be a dozen rules against this sort of thing, and they were breaking all of them. Her fingers clenched over the cold bottle as she forced herself to concentrate on his answer.

  "It's compulsive," he continued. "The longer you put it off, the more painful the change will be when it comes upon you anyway. It's better if you just let it happen. Get plenty of sleep, plan your schedule ahead of time, and make sure you're somewhere secluded. Once you figure out a location, it's better if you cache clothes around, too, in case something happens to the ones you're wearing."

  "You sound as if you know from experience," Kira said. Mainly she just wanted to get his attention, and she succeeded; Professor Donovan turned to fix her with smoldering gray eyes, and it was impossible not to smile at the embarrassing memories she could clearly see playing out behind them.

  "Laugh it up, Bentley. My experience is your hard-won lesson already learned for you," he said with a mock bow. Some of his beer sloshed onto the floor, which only made it harder for her to suppress
her laughter at his expense. It was her first time in recent memory that Kira could actually remember enjoying herself, and it was all because of a man she had thought she hated. She slid from her stool and tore a paper towel from the roll to help him mop up the spill. As she bent to her task, a sudden thought occurred to her that immediately sobered her mood.

  "Will I… will I be aware when I do? Will I be myself?"

  It scared her just to ask the question. After a long, silent moment, Professor Donovan set his beer aside and bent down beside her. Kira had stopped cleaning the floor without realizing, and his fingers gently extracted the paper towel from her hand.

  "There's the possibility that you'll blackout."

  Kira raised her eyes from the floor, and noticed tired lines cutting across his face that hadn't been there a minute ago. He was staring off into the middle distance; he didn't appear to realize he was even in the same room as her anymore. A moment later, his gaze cut back to hers, and she was startled by the ferociousness of his expression. "But you don't need to worry about a thing. I'll be there with you your first time, and any time after that, if you want. You don't have to go through this on your own."

  "Thank you, Sawyer," she whispered.

  It was like her gratitude—or was it the use of his first name?—jolted through the man like electricity. He moved to stand, and Kira grabbed the front of his shirt without thinking. Rather than stay down, the man carried them both to their feet. The swiftness of the move made her dizzy—was she really buzzed already on half a bottle of beer? His own hand came up to grasp her fingers and work them free, which was fine; the moment they came loose, she clutched his hand instead.

  "Why are you doing this?" she asked in an unsteady voice. Donovan glanced away from her, as if he had some pressing business to attend to on the stove, even though he had already finished and set aside their meal moment ago. "Why are you really helping me?"

  "Don't ask stupid questions, Bentley." His larger fingers worked to free themselves from hers, but she held to him fast. "I know that as your teacher, I'm supposed to tell you there are no stupid questions, but you've just proved academia wrong by finding one."

  "Why is it stupid?" she demanded. "Everything has only gotten more confusing since I met you!" She felt the hand trying to escape hers suddenly tighten, and her heart sped up. "And why can't you call me Kira? Is it because you have feelings for me? Because I—"

  "You're confused," Professor Donovan interjected heatedly. "You said so yourself. I've put myself in a position to guide you because I've been in your shoes, but that's all I can do… that's all I can be."

  "But when I kissed you," she whispered, eyes desperately searching his in the low light of the kitchen. "When you kissed me back—"

  Professor Donovan groaned, and for a wild moment, Kira thought he would pull her to him. He didn't need to speak the words; his response to the memory was confirmation enough. All he needed to do now was take her, the way they both knew he wanted to, and…

  "Bentley, do you remember your assessment of Jane Eyre?"

  Kira blinked. "My what?"

  Donovan's hand, the one that wasn't holding hers to his chest, reached forward to tuck a strand of blond hair back behind her ear. His touch was gone before she even knew it was there.

  "On Rochester and Jane," he intoned quietly.

  The moment in class came crashing back to her, and suddenly Kira knew what he would say—how he would use her own words against her.

  She didn't wait for the rejection to come. She wrenched her hand free, and moved back around to the other side of the bar without looking at him. Her face burned in humiliation. She had been confused about where they stood since their kiss that morning, but now the line had been drawn—it was the same line she had drawn herself, by pointing out the impossibility of a romance when there was already a preexisting power imbalance.

  Kira dropped her head into her hands as Sawyer Donovan—her professor—finished preparing dinner.

  This was why it never paid to go to English class.

  CHAPTER 9

  The week passed without further incident.

  Sawyer Donovan was beginning to qualify incidents as anything involved Kira Bentley outside of the classroom. She was on-time to his lectures every day, and from a carefully-maintained vantage behind his desk, he could see that she was beginning to look much healthier. Her blond hair looked fuller and glossier; her skin luminous; her lips…

  But that was a dangerous path to go down. All he needed to content himself with was the knowledge that had taken his dietary advice to heart, and that she was now subsisting on food beneficial to a wolf's appetite. He wanted to ask her how she was progressing himself, but she appeared to be avoiding him—she had taken to striking up conversations with her neighbors after the clock struck the hour, or gliding past his desk when he was preoccupied with another student.

  Their distance was for the best, but it still irked him. It more than irked him. It drove Sawyer Donovan absolutely insane to be so near her, and yet so necessarily removed. There were times he spoke to the class that he was only aware of her presence, of her eyes, on him. It was enough to make him wish he had let that staggering confession slip past her lips in his kitchen. Did it still linger there beside the taste of his kiss, or had she moved on? Had she taken his advice and let her unspoken feelings for him burn themselves out?

  Walking past her desk when everyone else's head was bent to their reading was sheer agony, but he had to do it. He slid her graded assignment back to her, purposefully disrupting her line of sight, before moving on. When she overturned it to read his 'additional notes', she would find his true message:

  Gosling Park. Sundown. Full moon tonight.

  She wouldn't be able to ignore or mistake his meaning. He knew she felt it as strongly as he did: the tidal pull in her blood, the heightened senses, the raw and itching skin that yearned to be split wide open so that the pure and feral form beneath it could emerge. She would meet him there, he had no doubt.

  And then… what? They would resume their unlikely relationship? Kira had been right to call him out. Her instincts about Donovan's own feelings did her credit, and his dismissal had caused her to doubt herself at a time when he should have been helping her build confidence. It was a necessary evil, he knew, but that didn't make him feel any less the villain. He had already damned himself with a kiss.

  He had determined that Gosling Park was a halfway point between his apartment and the campus dormitories, and within easy walking distance of both. He had changed here a time or two, and knew it to be forested and fairly secluded—a lack of play structures or paved paths meant that it was rarely frequented, and even the park rangers charged with maintenance didn't appear to see the point. There was a duck pond on the property that a migrating flock of geese had taken to calling a temporary home; their enduring presence, year after year, gave the park its namesake.

  He stood on the park lawn now, a breeze ruffling his windbreaker, and watched the figure slowly making her way toward him. She carried a duffle bag—good. It appeared she had been listening to him that night at his apartment despite the enormous elephant in the room.

  "We'll go into the woods here. About five minutes," he said as he turned and started walking. A few more strides and Kira fell into step beside him. "There's a glade that the moon hits just right."

  "What happens when the moon hits just right?" she asked as they passed the outer trees and lost themselves in the woods.

  "Everything gets a lot easier," Donovan responded.

  They found the glade right where he had left it, although he would spare her his cringe-worthy joke. The night around them was silent, as if every living thing was holding its breath. The sun was down now completely, and the moon was rising over the canopy of the trees.

  Donovan stripped his jacket off as Kira dropped her duffle bag. "Stash it," he said without looking. "Anywhere that's easily accessible, but that someone out walking around won't readily find. A bush
will work."

  "Do we…?" The girl trailed off as Donovan pulled his shirt over his head without a second thought. "Are we just… getting naked, then?"

  "Unless you want your clothes ruined." He turned back around, and her eyes cut away from him quickly as she grabbed up her duffle bag. "Feeling shy?" he called after her as she disappeared behind a tree. "That's not the Bentley I know!"

  "I hate you!" she shouted over her shoulder.

  "We both know that's not true," Donovan murmured below his breath. The thirsting question of whether or not Kira still had feelings for him had been satisfied. There was no light out save for the moon, and she could still barely bring herself to look at him. Then again, maybe that had something to do with the fact that he was half-naked.

  Donovan pushed his jeans off his hips until he stood fully naked in the middle of the clearing save for his boxers. He let the gentle moonlight filter down from the night sky and spill like milk across his bare skin. He could feel its pull on him much more strongly now. Something else pulled at his awareness, though, and he returned his attention to the tree that Kira had disappeared behind. She moved out slowly from behind it, and his breath caught at what he saw.

  Kira had successfully concealed herself behind one of the taller bushes, but there was no disguising the fact that her shoulders were bare. His eyes traveled downward helplessly, but the rest of her remained hidden. He saw her clutch her shoulders against the cold and knew her arms were crossed.

  "What now?" she called from across the clearing. "Do I go first?"

  "Do you feel it?" Donovan asked her. He saw her nod of confirmation. "Then we go together on my count. Ready?"

  "No," she moaned woefully.

  "Three… two…"

  The one was swallowed back down into his throat as his vocal cords stretched and shrank. His skin shivered beneath the moon, and dark fur erupted down his arms and sprang up along his chest. He eased out of his boxers as he fell to all fours, shaking himself to dispense what remained of his clothing. The change, abetted by exposure to the moon, was seamless; it was over in less than a minute. Donovan turned his lupine head and gazed down his snout in the direction that Kira had disappeared. Maybe he should have let her go first. If anything went wrong with her own change, he wouldn't be able to shift back to help…