by Tasha Black
“What about me what?”
“How long are you going to be in Tarker’s Hollow?”
“I’ll be here for the fall semester.”
“Then what?”
“Wow, we really didn’t devote much time to conversation last night, did we?”
Ainsley smiled wickedly and shook her head.
“You were all business, Miss Connor.”
Ainsley smirked.
“Did you just smirk?”
She shrugged and laid cloth napkins on the table.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer. She thought about resisting, but the wine was making her lazy. And besides, she was curious to see what would happen next.
“Why are you so obedient in the bedroom and so saucy outside of it?” he whispered in her ear, tickling her neck with his warm breath.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said lightly, pulling her wrist out of his grip and sliding into her seat at the table.
“Impudent. American. Girl,” he declared with a smile.
“Hungry too,” she replied, piling her plate with cucumbers, olives and a stack of warm pita wedges. “And what do you mean ‘American’?”
“I’m from England.”
“Where’s your sexy accent?”
“Seemed pretentious to hold onto it when I’ve lived here so long. I’ll tell you what,” Julian said, as he topped off her wine glass. “You can eat, and I will fill you in on the minor details, so that our fuck tonight doesn’t have to be so goddamned anonymous.”
Ainsley tried to be annoyed at his presumptuousness but couldn’t. Instead she smiled at him, popped an olive in her mouth, and gave him a queenly gesture to proceed.
“I grew up in rural England,” he began. “My mother was a seamstress. My father owned a small farm that had belonged to his father. We had a happy life until a lady moved next door. She was a widow.”
Ainsley looked up.
Oh shit. It was going to be a my-parents-got-a-divorce-and-I’ll-be-forever-traumatized story. What a shame that everyone Generation X and younger had one. She prepared herself for a whiney evening.
“Her name was Eugenie. She was lovely. Long black hair, soft white skin – just like yours, Ainsley - and a smile that would make your stomach do flips.”
He paused to dunk a baby carrot stick in hummus and offer to feed it to her. She accepted and let her lips graze his fingers as she sucked the carrot out of his hand.
“I was only twelve, but I would have done anything to earn one of her smiles. And I had plenty of opportunities. My mother felt dreadfully sorry for her and would send me over to do every kind of menial task.”
Okay. Right. Ainsley adjusted her expectations. It was going to be one of those braggy I-had-sex-when-I-was-twelve-because-ladies-can’t-resist-me stories.
“One day when I was there to trim her hedge, I heard a small sound inside her cottage. At first I thought it might be a kitten but as I listened it sounded more like crying. I went inside to see what was wrong.
“When I got inside, I saw Eugenie curled up on the sofa crying. I didn’t know what to do. I was twelve and very stupid socially. But the sight of her broke my heart and so I naturally did just what I would have done if she had been my own mother. I ran to kneel by her side and put my arm around her as best I could and patted her back.
“She looked up at me in surprise, and the smile that came through her tears was the most beautiful I had ever seen.
“ ‘Do you miss your husband very much, Eugenie?’ I asked her.
“ ‘Oh, my friend,’ she said kindly. ‘I do, but I’m not crying for him.’
“ ‘Then why are you crying?’ I asked.
“She lifted her hand, and in it was a little book. The Cherry Orchard.”
“Oh,” Ainsley breathed.
“And that is the story of how I met the love of my life. Russian lit.”
They smiled at each other. Then he selected a cucumber, dipped it in hummus and offered it to her.
Ainsley slowly licked a drip of hummus off the underside of the cucumber. Then she snatched the whole thing from him with her front teeth.
Julian’s eyes flashed.
“Behave! I’m not finished.”
Ainsley gave him an innocent look.
“My father wasn’t wild about me reading so much – he wanted me to be more interested in small dairy farms, like he had been when he was a boy. And my mother realized how attractive the widow was and stopped sending me to Eugenie for errands. But it was too late.”
He paused and pulled a triangle of pita across the bowl of hummus. It left a wake behind it like a little sailboat. He ate it, sipped his wine, and continued.
“I was hooked, and I couldn’t stop. We read them all together: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov. They broke our hearts, they made us laugh, they seemed somehow familiar to us in our lonely, country life.
“I ignored my parents and my chores and spent all the time I could with Eugenie. I would sit on the floor by her sofa and read to her. Sometimes she would read to me and carelessly run her fingers through my hair while she did.”
Ainsley leaned forward a bit. Maybe this was the part where the story would turn in one direction or the other.
“I ended up at university for Russian Lit and never looked back. Ultimately it led me here.”
“What about your parents. Have they forgiven you?”
“They died a long time ago. But yes, they wanted me to be happy.”
“And Eugenie, what happened to her? Did you ever…” Ainsley couldn’t finish.
“Stop with your endless questions, woman. I’m hungry!”
Ainsley realized he must have decided not to tell her the whole story. It actually made her curious even though she was pretty sure she knew where he was going with it. She decided the best way to get at it was to back off and get to it from another angle, another time.
Instead, she swept a baby carrot through the hummus and fed it to him. He took it and licked at her fingers. The unexpected tickling contact made her giggle.
“I love that sound,” Julian said simply, looking into her eyes.
Ainsley felt almost uncomfortable under the sincerity of his gaze. She liked him a lot, she really did. He was everything she’d dreamed of.
What was holding her back?
Maybe it was just the strain of so much happening at once.
She dismissed her doubts and returned his intense gaze with a shy smile.
He rewarded her with a smile so warm she felt it in her belly. The smile lines at the corners of his eyes were so sexy. He must be in his mid-thirties, at least. How old was he?
And how much wine had she had?
As she wondered, he poured the rest of the bottle into her glass.
Oh well, it had been a long day. It was nice to relax. And it wasn’t like she could get really drunk anyway. Another benefit of being a wolf.
She swirled the wine in her glass and took another sip.
Chapter 15
Julian looked at the books on the bench next to him.
“You enjoyed a little Dostoyevsky with your breakfast this morning?”
Ainsley giggled again.
Julian pulled back the pages of Crime and Punishment with his thumb and let them go until he came to what he was looking for. Then he paged through carefully and stopped.
“This one makes me think of you, Ainsley: ‘We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.’”
Whoa.
“That’s very romantic,” Ainsley began carefully.
“No! Hold that thought!”
He grabbed The Brothers Karamazov and thumbed and paged through quickly.
“‘Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than to find, as quickly as possible, someone to worship.’”
“Oh.”
Julian put the book down.
“’M
uch unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.’”
The last quote hung in the air. Suddenly Ainsley didn’t feel like giggling anymore.
“I’ve never met anyone like you, Ainsley,” Julian breathed. “I know we just met but you’re already so important to me. Promise me that no matter what happens you won’t forget that.”
“What do you mean?”
A dark look crossed his face like a storm cloud, then vanished.
Instead of answering, he took her hand and kissed each knuckle.
His lips were so gentle. Her skin tingled and she felt a wave of giddiness. She leaned forward and ran her fingers through his hair.
He groaned and pulled her other hand into his hair. His arms went around her waist and he kissed her like there was no tomorrow.
His hair was silken between her fingers and his kiss was doing crazy things to the rest of her body. There was urgency between them now that she hadn’t felt last night.
He drew back from their kiss and pulled her up. Once again she found herself being led by the hand at top speed. She was beginning to feel like Alice in Through the Looking Glass. But unlike Alice, she knew just where she was headed.
Her girlhood bed seemed to embrace her as Julian tossed her on her back. The room spun a little as he stripped off his clothes. She tried to lift herself on her elbows to undress but he was on her in an instant.
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head playfully. “I’ll take care of you, Ainsley. You relax, sweetheart. Is this okay?”
“Yes, please.”
He smiled and lifted her up enough to unzip her new dress. It slid down her shoulders. He lowered her and lifted her hips to slide the dress off.
The evening air felt cool on her skin and she could feel her nipples stiffen and push against the lacy cups of her bra.
Julian sat back on his heels and took her in. He looked like a hungry man looking at a feast.
“Ainsley.”
She reached for him and he fell on her, kissing her cheeks, her neck, the tops of her breasts. In a moment he had peeled off her bra and panties and she was as naked as he was.
Her whole body felt like it was floating on a wave of delicate pleasure. She was almost overwhelmed.
She caught her fingers in his hair again. He gasped as she dragged him up to her face.
He took her lips in his own and sunk his tongue deep in her mouth, while sliding his cock against her already moist opening without penetrating her.
Her insides clenched and she cried out, grinding her hips up against him.
She could feel his smile against her lips as he dragged his cock across her again.
Her whole body ached for him to possess her. Her pussy yawned open for him and soon his stiffened member was slick with her desire.
He groaned in defeat.
She almost cried with relief as he eased himself into her.
He cradled her face in his hands and his blue eyes held hers as he found his way home. The pleasure of their joining was almost eclipsed by the intensity of his gaze. He looked happy and sad at the same time.
Ainsley felt a tug at her heart – though whether it was love or compassion she couldn’t say.
The whole thing felt like a dream. He whispered her name and she closed her eyes and melted around him immediately. It was a gentle climax- slow, easy and sweet as honey.
As soon as she opened her eyes, his jaw tensed and he came, calling her name again as he searched her eyes in desperate concentration.
She was asleep almost as soon as he rolled next to her. Her last memory was of his arms cradling her as she drifted off.
Chapter 16
Ainsley awoke in a haze. Light bled through the sheers in her room. Her head was pounding.
Something happened last night. What was it?
Julian.
Ainsley lay back and stretched. She could feel to either side of the double bed, he wasn’t in there with her.
Her first thought was that maybe he had been the one to sneak home this time. But she could sense him somewhere in the house.
She sat up again and swung her feet to the floor, then had to stop and steady herself. She was lightheaded.
How much wine had she drunk?
Her wolf’s chemistry normally metabolized alcohol almost as fast as she could drink it.
Suddenly her wolf was alive inside her like she had called it.
Before she could think, she was crouched low to the floor. Soundlessly, she slunk to the door and into the hallway. She threw her head back and inhaled deeply.
He was close.
She closed her eyes and listened. His heart pounded away at a dull pace down the hall into her father’s study.
The wolf pushed at her bones and clawed at her skin, but somehow Ainsley held her back.
She padded softly down the hallway, unsure why she was sneaking around her own house, but knowing in her core that it was necessary.
A ghastly blue light was coming out of the doorway of the study. Ainsley thought of the electric blue glow of Julian’s eyes in her dream.
Her wolf shuddered and her scalp prickled in sympathy.
Still she crept forward. She could see Julian’s frame silhouetted in the azure glow. He was whispering something.
She let go enough to let her wolf hear him. He repeated a phrase. Not English.
“Invenies quod perierat.”
A glowing blue arrow floated in front of him, spinning lazily inside a circle.
Her wolf sensed a great wrongness. It pulled her straight into the room.
She crouched for cover and slid backward to avoid knocking over a stack of books. Her hip slammed into the chest from the third floor with a resounding thud.
No.
The strange thing in the air swung around to point at her. It looked like a compass settling on north.
Julian spun and stared.
“You?”
Ainsley didn’t stop to think about how he had betrayed her. She didn’t think about the thousands of hours of acute agony over a lifetime of resisting her wolf at every full moon. She didn’t think about her parents or past.
She let the burden of thought and control fall to her feet and shatter into a million pieces.
The wolf nudged her consciousness, offering, urging.
Ainsley assented.
Take me. Take over. Do what you were made to do.
Her body was in a rapture of anticipation. Every cell tingled and began to rearrange.
She was going to shift.
And then she was going to kill Julian.
Episode 3
Chapter 1
The ecstasy of transformation suffused Ainsley’s body.
Tremors of pleasure and anticipation flickered through her. Her wolf coiled itself tightly. Its release would be earth shattering.
“Subsisto lupo mutatis!” Julian lifted his hand and a lightning bolt of ghastly blue light shot from his fingertips, striking Ainsley so hard, she bounced off the walnut door like a rag doll.
Pain blossomed in the back of her head, but it was dwarfed by the agony unleashed by the evil blue light. It snaked through her body and constricted her chest. Her blood ran cold and she struggled for breath as though she had been dunked in an icy river.
Her transformation stopped dead. Her wolf ceased to howl. It wasn’t gone completely, just…hiding, from whatever this was.
Julian stared at her, frozen in horror.
Push said a voice in her head.
With everything she had, Ainsley pushed against the light. At first nothing happened. The pain only intensified.
Push the voice repeated, more urgently.
She gathered the rest of her strength around her and pushed again.
Something broke free inside her and the light left her body with the force of a bullet. Her whole being sung with exhilaration.
The light hit Julian square in the chest, slamming him back into the leaded glass window of the study, w
hich exploded immediately. She had time to take in his shocked expression as his body was flung violently into the space above the rhododendrons out front.
Ainsley skidded across the floor. Most of the glass had gone out the window with Julian, but enough had fallen inside to find its way into her bare feet. She crouched in the broken window and peered into the yard below.
The rhododendrons were still shaking from Julian’s landing.
But he was gone.
She remained hunched down at the window, grasping the frame for support.
What just happened?
What had they done to each other?
Ainsley let her body slide to the floor. Blood trickled from tiny wounds on her hands and feet. She ached all over.
The beautiful glass window was ruined and her father’s study was trashed again. No matter what she did in this awful town, it didn’t matter. Everything she touched went to hell.
Why couldn’t things just be normal for a little while?
She curled up on her side.
She would allow herself to cry for two full minutes. Then she would sit up, pick the glass out of her hands and feet, and clean up the study again.
Then she would do whatever she had to do to get out of Tarker’s Hollow, quickly.
Chapter 2
The screen door snapped shut.
Ainsley’s eyes popped open.
Erik’s masculine aroma wafted up the stairs before she even heard his footsteps.
“Ainsley!” he cried in a hoarse voice.
Ainsley squeezed her eyes shut. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
He thundered into the room cursing softly under his breath.
“What happened?”
She opened her eyes reluctantly to find him crouching by her side.
“Are you okay?”
His eyes scanned her body, and he cursed again when he saw the blood on her hands and feet.
“I’m fine.”
Ainsley tried to sit up but a sliver of glass in her palm sent an electric shock of pain up her arm.
“You’re not fine. Goddamn it, Ainsley, why are you so stubborn?”
He scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the hall to her room.
