by Lynn Red
She stared at me, blankly.
“Not familiar with that around here?”
“Well, we’ve got high school, but I’m not sure what you mean. Remember, I don’t really know why you’re leaving, so maybe start at the beginning?”
“It’s just that when I came here,” I took a deep breath that rattled a little bit in my chest. “Okay, well, I left home because yeah I needed a job, but also because I’d never fit in a single place in my whole life. I mean, look at me.”
I shook a lacy sleeve at Jamie and pushed my hair out of my face. “This hair? I used to dye it blue okay? I’ve never fit in anywhere. And then in college, I wasn’t enough of a lunatic to fit in with the whackos. Right? I went from being the crazy girl in high school to being a bore.”
“Jesus,” Jamie said softly.
“And all the while, this asshole,” I pointed at the picture of my uncle, “told me how all the music I listened to, and the, I dunno, the shit I put in my hair, and the nail polish I wore... he told me how it was all just wasting time. He had me convinced that I was just a big, giant waste of time.”
When tears came, they came in a flood.
Jamie sat there without talking, more patient than I ever imagined her being, though I guess I never gave her much of a chance.
“I don’t... sorry,” I said, sniffing.
“No, no, no apologizing. I’m the one who asked.” Slowly, she rubbed her hand on my shoulder.
“Then,” I continued, “I came here, you know? I met Erik and then... it just all fell into place. As stupid as it might sound, Jamesburg is the first place I’ve ever felt like home. And now, because of some zombie reminding everyone that they hate humans, then that’s it? I’m just supposed to suck it up and either say goodbye to this place, or be fine living as a second class citizen?”
My shoulders trembled, and my breath came in short, hard bursts.
For a moment, Jamie just stroked my back and let me shake.
“You know, Isabel,” she said, slowly easing us back into conversation. “You told me things that I didn’t know, but I knew, if that makes any sense.”
I nodded. “I guess so, but what does it matter? It can’t ever work between us, can it? If the whole town thinks I’m some kind of thief waiting to happen, how can we ever be together?”
“Well if you put it that way,” Jamie said softly, “it sounds a lot worse than it is. Look. Erik is who he is. Right? He’s big, and strong and rough and has those muscles and...”
“Uh, right, yeah, that’s all true,” I said, grinning slightly, despite myself. “He certainly does have that going for him.”
“And he told you he loves you. Right?”
“Wait, how did you know that?” I asked.
“I might’ve taken an accidental peak into your noodle. But I swear that was all I saw.”
I nodded, closing my eyes. “Yeah, he... he did, right before I left.”
“One thing I know about Erik,” Jamie said, “and remember, I’ve known him a lot longer than you – is that he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He isn’t the type to give you compliments he doesn’t think are real. I’m sure you’ve noticed that, too.”
“Ugh, yeah,” I said.
“I dated him for a few years,” Jamie said. “I know all about that one.”
She laughed, which loosened me up some. “Listen,” she said, continuing, “I know this is hard. I know it is. I know what it’s like to be in love with someone and have to keep from full on for whatever reason. It’s terrible.”
“Well I’m just stuck,” I said. “If I stay here, I’ll cause problems – Erik says that the whole town will riot in the streets it comes out that he marks a pureblood human to be his mate. The playing around, I guess, is just fine. But if it’s official, that’s apparently the end of the world.” I took a long breath. “Or I leave, and I don’t want to leave but I guess I have to.”
“You give up too quickly,” Jamie said. “How bad do you want this?”
“What? What do you mean?” I asked. “I want him worse than anything. This place is my home now. I don’t want any part of going back to all those bad memories.”
That was the first time I said it out loud. I mean, I’d thought the same thing plenty of times before, but saying it made it feel more real, somehow. I didn’t want Ohio, I didn’t want my creepy uncle, or my nasty sister in law, or any of them. My place was Jamesburg, among all these completely improbable creatures that no one else on earth knew to exist. In a backward, funny way, it all made sense.
The weird, curvy girl with the blue hair and the slightly wonky outlook on the world moves halfway across the country to the only place even more cartoonish than she is, and she falls right into place.
“What do I need to do?” I asked. I sat up straight, steel in my nerves. “I’ll do anything to make these people trust me, if that’s what it takes. I’ll do anything to stay here, to be with him. But,” I stopped for a second, considering my words. “That’s not it. That’s not all. I want to be with him, but there’s more. I want to do it for me, you know?”
A smile crept across Jamie’s face.
I kept on before she could interrupt. “I’ve never had a home, not really. I had my shitty Uncle Ted and Ohio, and I guess some friends in college, but I’ve never had a place before. It might sound really weird, but I feel like this is home to me now.”
Without noticing what I was doing, I had taken all the folders out of my little box and put them back in my desk. Jamie watched with great interest as I pulled one of the photos out and showed it to her. “He was awful, Jamie,” I said.
“What did he do to you? This is Ted, right? The uncle?”
I nodded. “He raised me, yeah. Raised me, made me feel like hell every second of every day. I was never good enough for him. Wasn’t religious enough, wasn’t fit enough, wasn’t smart enough. It wore me down.”
“That kind of thing would wear anyone down, even a vampire bat,” Jamie said. “But you know who doesn’t think any of those things about you?”
“Erik?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Erik,” Jamie said.
-7-
Erik was early to the office the next day. Like really early.
It was just past six when I looked up from the papers I had spread out on my desk at the sound of his giant road hog motorcycle shutting off outside.
I got up, a little surprised, and crossed my very small office to the window. Erik’s eyes were so sunken and black-ringed that even with his tanned face, they were readily apparent. I watched him for a second, until he looked up and gave me the world’s most half-hearted smile when I saw me in the window.
He looked like he wanted to say something, so I pushed open the window, hoping he would.
Instead, he just looked to the ground and walked through the door.
The last few days had been some of the hardest I’d ever dealt with, and I knew the hard times weren’t over.
I could understand. Erik needed to keep the council happy, or he might end up run out of town or dead. But at the same time, I wished more than anything for him to realize that I wasn’t some kind of dangerous liaison. I was just the same me I’d always been – that he apparently fell in love with.
His footsteps coming down the hall sent a jolt up my back. I looked over at the clock again, and barely a minute had passed since I first heard his bike outside. In two or three hours, this whole place was going to be buzzing with activity.
Today was the day that they decided to reconvene to discuss the options about the ex-alpha’s return, and judging from the look on Erik’s face, he wasn’t very excited about the meeting.
“Didn’t expect to see you,” he said, walking in behind me. “What happened that made you stay?”
“You did,” I said, turning on a heel and facing the man I’d wanted to see since the night before the long weekend, when it all blew up. “You made me stay, even though you tried your best to get me to leave.”
/>
Somehow though, now that I was facing him, I felt a pang in my stomach, like I’d been starving and then plopped down in front of a pizza buffet.
It was too much, way too much, all at once.
Eyeing me cautiously, Erik circled my desk. “What’s all this?”
“The pictures?” I asked. “Just people from home. Actually, looking at them made me want to stay. I don’t want to go back to that world. I like this one just fine.”
“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes in thought. “I meant the papers, but...”
“Oh, these old ledgers? I broke into the town’s bank records and fished them up. Figure if everyone already thinks I’m a crook that I may as well put some of my less well-known skills to work.”
Erik grinned. “You’re a computer criminal? Who would ever have guessed?”
“Actually,” I said, “my old hobby is putting stupid passwords into computers until things open up. Maybe a good idea to change the town’s e-banking account password to something other than ‘password’? You know that, like, everyone does that, right?”
“I, uh, I didn’t set that.” Erik laughed nervously. “Must’ve been Duggan. Anyway,” he said changing the subject quickly. “What’s the point of all this? What are you trying to find?”
Grabbing a handful of papers, I turned back around, and gasped when I felt a hand on my back and then smelled the vague spice of day-old cologne mixed with Erik’s naturally rough, hard, leather aroma. I let out a little breath, and he pulled me close, driving my lips apart with his and swirling his tongue against mine.
“I needed this so badly,” he groaned, tasting me. “You have no idea.”
Another kiss, harder, more eager than the first, and then Erik pushed under my shirt. As Erik’s rough fingertips made a slow track up my back, my nipples pricked to life, excited by the promise of his hands on my bare skin.
“Wait a minute,” I breathed. “Erik, no, we can’t do this. We’ve got to—”
“We’re not going to do anything at all if I can’t concentrate.”
The hands on my back pushed my shirt up until it was bunched under my breasts. He was tugging, pulling, and all the while, kissing my neck. Erik’s hard stubble brushing my skin sent little charges down my stomach and between my legs.
“What about the addiction thing?” I asked. I tried to concentrate on my knees not buckling as one of his hands danced down my front. He cupped his palm under my sex, massaging me through my khakis. “You can’t keep away from me and that’s what you’re scared about right? That you’re hooked on me or... or... oh God Erik, that feels so good.”
The pulses of his fingers against me were quickly becoming too much. Taking a breath, I moved backwards until I felt my desk against my ass and let it take some of my weight.
“I don’t care,” he said, pulling my shirt over my head and ripping his open.
Buttons clattered to the floor and before I knew it, his heat was against my chest, his thickness between my legs, pulsing against my sweetest parts.
“Nothing matters,” he said. “Fuck the town, to hell with everything else. All I want – all I need – is right here.”
His voice had taken on that naughty, husky sound he gets when he’s really ratcheted up and almost out of control. Before he could rip this bra like he had the last one – I was running out – I unhooked it and spread my legs around his waist, almost giggling with pleasure when I felt him against me.
“We can’t do this all day,” I said. “We can’t... oh... oh my God, Erik! You’re not the only one who needed this.”
He snorted a laugh and pushed himself against me. The hard roughness of his jeans stung a little at first, but that quickly melted away into helpless, wonderful pleasure that coursed through every inch of my body. Erik ran his free hand up my back and grabbed a handful of ponytail, then yanked it backwards to bare my neck to his mouth.
Erik gave me one hard suck behind the ear, then another under my tilted-back chin. I grabbed Erik’s shoulders to keep from falling back.
“I want you so bad,” I whispered. “I have since I left your... your place when...”
I was interrupted by another jolt of electric pleasure from Erik’s tongue. He slid it in a slow path along my jaw from my chin to my ear, where he pulled my earlobe in his mouth and nibbled softly.
He swelled between my legs, teasing me with his size. In short, hard strokes, he ran himself against me until I couldn’t handle anymore.
“Let me... let me help you,” I said, reaching down and undoing the first button on his fly. The pressure he put on his own jeans made the rest a little harder to manage, but when I got so angry desperate that I just yanked, they all fell open. “Oh! Oh yes!”
Sliding my hand inside his pants, I relished the heat filling my palm. Even through stretched-tight boxer briefs, his skin burned, and as I stroked, he grew and grew until I thought he was going to rip his own underwear apart.
When next he nipped my shoulder, then my neck, his teeth were a little sharper, more lupine.
“I love it when you want me so bad you start shifting,” I said with a soft moan. “I can’t believe we’re doing this here, what if someone comes in?”
“Who cares?” Erik said in a thirsty, ragged voice. “We’re all animals, aren’t we? Why not act like it every now and then?”
Sometimes Erik said things that didn’t make much sense. But then other times – like right then – what he said was perfect.
The way his callused fingertips dragged over my skin was almost sublime, but when he massaged one of my breasts just in time to start kissing down the front of my neck and then took my nipple in his mouth, I was gone.
It was all I could do to prop myself up on my hands, but even that almost failed me when he thrust himself harder against my sex. Even with two layers of fabric separating us, Erik’s cock between my legs got me groaning.
“How do you do this?” I asked as my eyes rolled back in my head and my whole body seemed to drink him. Every inch of me, every fiber of my trembling being was ready for Erik to take me and make me his.
“Don’t make me wait,” I whispered. “I don’t think I can. If you keep this up, you’re going to have to take care of yourself.”
“I love your body,” he whispered, “I love the way you move, the little noises you make. I can’t get enough of you, never could.”
With a quick adjustment, Erik pulled his hand away from my sex and slid it under the small of my back, supporting me as I turned to heated-up gelatin. He curled his fingers against my bare skin and kneaded harder, sliding his tongue in a slow circle around my nipple before nibbling, then taking it fully into his mouth and sucking.
“Oh! Oh, yes,” I moaned. “Harder, suck it harder. Hurt me so good, Erik, make me hurt, please.” My voice had gone from assertive to hollow. Pleasure buffeted me from head to toe, making my muscles clench and my breath come in hard, ragged bursts.
“Lie back,” he said. “You’re so damn wiggly I can’t keep you from falling over.” I smiled as he laughed softly, and eased me gently to the desk, shoving all the papers out of the way, and onto the floor. “Just relax.”
Those words warmed the inside of my head just like Erik was doing my body. He gave me a gentle touch of his tongue around my nipple in an outwardly-spiraling circle that almost took my breath away.
“You’re so perfect,” he moaned softly. “All these curves, these eyes, your lips...” He punctuated that with a kiss that drive my head backward into the desk with passion. “I don’t care about an addiction, or anything else. When love is real, you’re supposed to be addicted, right? May as well have it be a physical one.”
Dragging his increasingly fang-like teeth down my stomach, Erik grabbed the waist of my panties between his teeth and pulled them away from my skin, inhaling deeply. “Love... your smell,” he said. “Love your... your taste.”
“Don’t rip those,” I said with a grin as I ran my fingers through his beautiful black hair. “Tho
se panties I mean, they’re expensive.”
Grinning, he pulled them over the curve of my ass, lifting me off the desk effortlessly. He kissed right below my navel, then an inch lower, then over top of the cotton that still covered my sex.
Each press of his lips, each gentle suck that preceded the kisses, had me swooning.
“Does this feel good?” he whispered. “Do you like me licking you? I could do this for hours.”
The heat of his tongue wet me from the inside out.
By the time he finally moved my panties and his tongue touched my bare skin, I was ready to give up myself, my house, my car, and my dog if it would keep him going. All he needed to do was say so and I’d chain myself to a table or get a job at the local video store. It didn’t matter. The only important thing in the entire world right then was what was happening between us.
“Taste so perfect,” he whispered as his tongue went between my folds, down then up. “So beautiful, so...”
I heard the sound of skin on skin and knew he was giving himself what he insisted I didn’t need to give. Erik’s tongue paused on my aching button where he focused for a moment, flicking his tongue.
“I’ve never,” I stopped to catch my breath, “never felt anything like this before. I thought you’d done everything to me, why is it so much different this time?”
I grabbed Erik’s head and thrust my hips desperately upward, grinding his teeth and his tongue into me.
“Because,” he said, pulling a way for a split second. “This is the first time we’ve gone more than a day without giving in, without feeling each other. Maybe we should do this sometimes, just for fun?”
I didn’t bother replying. Erik drove his tongue home and joined it with a finger that he curled hard against the front of me, against a place so sweet and wonderful that it made my scalp quiver.
A moan escaped my lips and I rolled my head from side to side, biting my tongue.
“Shh!” Erik said, clamping a hand over my mouth. “I think I heard someone.”
Sure enough, when we fell silent for a moment, there were footsteps – halting, sharp footsteps – outside the door. They seemed to stop.
