The Better To Kiss You With

by Michelle Osgood

  “I’m a werewolf.”

  Deanna stared at her. “What?”

  “I’m a werewolf,” Jamie repeated.

  Deanna blew out a slow breath. “First you think the situation with crywolf is so serious that I need to quit my job over it, and now you’re making jokes?” She was at a loss to understand what was going on in Jamie’s head, but was doing her best to “find her calm,” as Nathan put it.

  “Deanna, I’m not joking.”

  “Yeah, and I’m a vampire. And Arthur’s actually a shapeshifter. Oh, and Heather across the hall is a mummy. Ha, ha, ha.” Deanna arched an eyebrow. “What is going on with you?”

  “Listen to me. I turn into a wolf. An actual wolf. With fur, and fangs, and—”

  “Let me guess, they’re all the better to eat me with?” Deanna gave a weak laugh. “Can we stop? Please?”

  Instead of saying anything, Jamie began to unbutton her shirt. Unable to sit still any longer, Deanna leapt off the bed. “What are you doing? Are you on something?” Nathan had done—still did—some strange drugs, so Deanna wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept of a bad trip. “Sit down and I’ll get you a glass of water, and then maybe you can sleep.” And sleep it off.

  Jamie shook her head. “I’m going to show you.”

  “You’re going to show me that you’re a werewolf.” Maybe if she said it enough, Jamie would realize how absurd she sounded.

  Jamie said nothing, refusing to meet Deanna’s gaze as she pulled off her shirt and dropped it on the floor at her feet. She hadn’t worn a bra, and as her hands moved to the waistband of her jeans, Deanna jerked her eyes away. She’d watched Jamie get undressed dozens of times, but never felt as intrusive as she did right now. No matter what it might look like to an outside observer, there was nothing sexual about the way Jamie pushed her jeans down her hips, as if she’d rather be doing anything but this.

  “I’m serious. This is actually insane. Please stop,” Deanna pleaded. “Whatever’s going on, we’ll talk about it. Just stop.”

  Jamie placed her jeans on top of her shirt, stepped out of her underwear and tugged off her socks until she stood completely naked in front of Deanna. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay. Let me get you a robe, all right? You can sit down and we’ll—”

  Jamie wasn’t listening. She closed her eyes and let her hands fall to her sides. For a moment nothing happened, and Deanna rubbed wearily at her mouth. Maybe she needed to call Nathan and get him back here.

  Between one second and the next, Jamie’s entire body just—crumpled in on itself.

  A strangled scream choked itself off in Deanna’s throat as she jerked back in horror. Her calves hit the edge of the bed, spilling her back onto the mattress with enough force that the breath left her body in a rush.

  Deanna pushed herself up on her elbows as she gasped for air. Her eyes were wide and glassy. Fur crawled over the misshapen thing that had once been a perfectly ordinary human body. Jamie—because no matter what Deanna’s eyes were telling her, it had to still be Jamie—gave a shuddering twitch, and suddenly her limbs became limbs again. Only they weren’t human arms and legs, they were very clearly canine. Or, lupine, a small, hysterical voice inside Deanna corrected.

  Arthur gave a welcoming yip and bounded past Deanna to sniff delightedly at the, well, wolf that was standing on four clawed feet on Deanna’s apartment floor. Wolf-Jamie gave a quick wag of her tail and a lick to Arthur’s head before she carefully sat down and stared at Deanna.

  Chapter Eleven |

  “Well, that… happened,” Deanna managed faintly. Her ears rang in the echoing silence of the room. Jamie said nothing. Obviously. Because she was a wolf. And wolves didn’t speak. Or they couldn’t speak English, anyway. Unless werewolves had English-compatible voice boxes? Deanna could feel that small thread of hysteria becoming bigger and she clamped her mouth shut on the trilling laugh that bubbled in her throat.

  As a wolf—a werewolf—Jamie was over twice the size of Arthur. Maybe three times bigger if Deanna counted not just height, but girth as well. Jamie’s eyes were no longer the heady bourbon-brown Deanna was used to, but a clear, icy gray that looked oddly familiar. She was white around her muzzle, brownish-tan ran up the bridge of her nose, darker gray masked her eyes and brindled fur continued down her sides and, presumably, her back.

  Deanna sat up, her brain buzzing with blank static. “Does this mean what I think it means?” she asked absently. “Did the Twilight books get something right?”

  Jamie’s jaw parted to reveal a set of wicked white fangs before her tongue lolled out, and Deanna thought that meant she might be laughing.

  “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.” Deanna reached out a hand before she could think better of it, her fingers trembling. With a cautious movement, as if trying not to scare Deanna, Jamie dropped her head so that Deanna could touch her.

  Jamie’s fur was coarser than Arthur’s, thick and heavy under the palm of Deanna’s hand. As she stroked it, she felt for all the world as if she were petting a giant dog.

  “Okay. Um. Well.” Deanna swallowed and tried to get a handle on what had just happened. “So you’re a werewolf. That’s a thing. A thing that people can be.” She pulled her hand away, staring at her own palm as if she’d never seen it. “Okay. Wow.”

  Jamie shifted, and Deanna figured it was as close to a shrug as she could manage now that she had four legs. Deanna flattened her hand against the bed, not entirely sure what to do now. What did you say to your girlfriend, who had literally turned into a bitch in front of your eyes? Especially when it seemed she couldn’t say anything back?

  Jamie made a low noise in her throat, not quite a whine, but didn’t move from where she sat on Deanna’s floor.

  “Um. I think it would be good if you went back to being human for now. If you can?”

  Jamie nodded—weird, seeing a giant wolf nod—and backed up. Deanna took a deep breath and steeled herself, half wanting to look away but horribly fascinated, as Jamie seemed to expand and then shrink and the coat of fur vanished. As suddenly as she’d shifted the first time, Jamie was crouched naked and human on the hardwood.

  “Hi,” Deanna said, her eyes so round she could feel them bulging and thought they might fall right out of their sockets.

  “Hey,” Jamie replied softly, staying small and crouched as though unsure how Deanna would react, but ready to cringe away if need be.

  “You could put your clothes back on,” Deanna offered. “Or I could get you that robe. I don’t… I mean… you… yeah,” she trailed off, lamely. She thought she was in shock—though, unlike when she’d received the private message from crywolf or his letter in the mail, it wasn’t panic-driven. Everything seemed a bit distant, as though she were experiencing the world through a clouded pane of thick glass.

  Moving as cautiously as she had when clothed in her pelt, Jamie unfurled herself and tugged her clothes back on. Deanna didn’t mean to keep watching her, meant to politely cast her gaze to the side, but she still couldn’t reconcile the giant, furred wolf with the long-limbed, well-muscled, increasingly less-naked woman in front of her.

  Fastening the last button on her shirt, Jamie straightened and remained standing at the window, her own gaze fixed on the bed sheets somewhere to the right of Deanna. Arthur was entirely unconcerned and flopped down on the floor between them, gave a giant yawn and then tucked his head between his front paws.

  “Do you want me to go?” Jamie finally broke the silence. Her completely ordinary, human eyes flicked to Deanna’s face.

  “No.” Deanna shook her head. “No. You should stay. Um… I feel like I should have a lot of questions.” She gave a ghost of a smile. “But I kind of just want to sit for a bit, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.” Jamie smoothed nervous fingers down the front of her shirt and moved to step around Arthur to the armchair in the corner
.

  Deanna still wasn’t sure what was going on, and was at least partly convinced she was stuck in a really weird dream. But assuming that she wasn’t, and assuming that her girlfriend was—and had been—a werewolf, Deanna didn’t think starting another fight would help. If nothing that was happening made sense, then Deanna supposed it was up to her to make some kind of sense out of it. So she wasn’t going to freak out about something so far beyond her control—and quite possibly out of Jamie’s as well. She would try to digest this new information and keep everything else as normal as possible.

  Jamie continued to hold herself as if ready for Deanna hit her or try to remove her from the apartment. Deanna was very sure she could do neither unless Jamie let her—suddenly Jamie’s careless strength seemed all the more careless. If anything, Jamie seemed more fragile than Deanna felt, and the thought of Jamie thinking she needed to protect herself from Deanna, despite everything Deanna had just learned, made Deanna’s heart ache. “You could sit with me?” she offered, finally.

  Jamie froze while in the act of sitting in the armchair, her butt hanging awkwardly over the seat. Deanna might have laughed if the situation had been any different.

  “I would like it if you’d sit with me,” Deanna clarified. Everything still seemed oddly muffled, and she supposed it was her brain’s way of protecting her from the complete bizarreness of what had just occurred. Jamie had clearly expected Deanna to take her being a werewolf as a deal-breaker for their relationship, and Deanna thought she probably would have a point there; but right now all Deanna wanted was her girlfriend, even if that girlfriend was a werewolf. Which was still an idea that didn’t feel entirely real. Damn.

  Jamie gave a slow nod and crawled into the bed, careful to leave plenty of room between herself and Deanna as she settled against the back of the couch. Deanna gave her a moment to get comfortable and then turned toward her, wriggling so that she was tucked against Jamie’s side with her head resting just under Jamie’s breasts and her arm wrapped around Jamie’s middle.

  Jamie froze at Deanna’s first touch and stayed nearly rigid as tension thrummed through her body. After an agonizing minute, she warily brought her hand to rest on Deanna’s shoulder and, when Deanna only nuzzled in closer, Jamie finally began to relax.

  “Thank you for telling me,” Deanna murmured against Jamie’s ribs.

  “Uh, you’re welcome?” Jamie hedged. She had tensed again when Deanna spoke, but when Deanna said nothing further she calmed.

  Jamie’s thumb moved in slow circles over Deanna’s skin and, with the steady thud of Jamie’s heartbeat under her ear and her adrenaline rush fading fast, Deanna felt her eyes grow heavy. With a contented sigh, she closed them.

  Deanna wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she opened her eyes, but the room was dark. Arthur had blatantly disregarded all the rules and joined them on the bed; his furred back was curled against Deanna’s.

  With a sigh Deanna rolled over and shoved him toward the edge of the bed, then pushed until, with an undignified yelp, he tumbled off the side. “He knows better,” she told Jamie, rolling back toward her and refusing to feel bad when Arthur gave a piteous whine at the indignity of having to stay on the floor while everyone else was on the bed. “Sorry I fell asleep.” She flopped onto her back and stretched, feeling as though she’d been in the same position for hours. Which, considering the dryness in her mouth, she might have been.

  “It’s okay.” Her expression unreadable, Jamie shifted away from Deanna. “How are you?”

  Deanna considered. “All right. A little groggy. I hate waking up from naps.”

  “That’s not—” Jamie broke off, her words sharp with frustration. “I mean how are you with this,” she gestured to herself.

  “With you?” Deanna asked, surprised. “Fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

  “Because I just told you I was a werewolf and then actually turned into a wolf and you just… fell asleep.”

  “I guess I was more tired than I realized. Though,” Deanna smiled, “you can’t tell me that’s not the best reaction you could have hoped for.”

  Jamie opened her mouth to counter this, but after a moment closed it.

  Deanna shrugged. “I know I’m supposed to be accusing you of lying and feeling betrayed and possibly throwing things at your head, but it wouldn’t change anything. You’d still be a werewolf, and I’d still be,” falling in love with you was on the tip of her tongue, startling even herself; with a hasty swallow Deanna finished, “here. I’d still be here. So, how about we skip the whole yelling thing.”

  Jamie said nothing, and Deanna wondered if they were going to have a fight anyway. She couldn’t deny that a part of her was freaking out—that in some corner of her mind she was panicking about the fact that when Jamie shifted, so had Deanna’s entire world. But Jamie being a werewolf obviously didn’t stop her from being incredibly human in so many other ways. She was strong, and smart and beautiful, and if the fact that she sometimes went furry didn’t change any of those things, maybe it didn’t have to change their relationship. Not if they didn’t let it.

  Jamie blew out a slow breath, though it didn’t seem to relax her much. “All right. But… you’ll talk to me, right? If you stop being so fine. You’ll tell me?”

  “I will,” Deanna promised, and slid her fingers between Jamie’s. “Thanks for sticking around.”

  “Of course.” Jamie’s fingers tightened around Deanna’s as her expression went grim. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Well,” Deanna said dryly, pushing herself upright. “That got dark.”

  “You know why I had to tell you—right?”

  “Because you finally felt like you could trust me, and didn’t feel like keeping such a strange secret?” Deanna gave a weak smile, ignoring the weight of trepidation that settled in her chest.

  Jamie didn’t look as if she found Deanna amusing. “Because I think crywolf is one of us.”

  “Queer?” Deanna tried another joke, but it fell equally flat.

  “A werewolf,” Jamie clarified, mouth twisting unhappily.

  Deanna sighed and tucked her knees up so she could rest her cheek against them, then turned to face Jamie. She was still being careful about her body language, and relatively careful about her actual language, because Jamie seemed wary enough to bolt if Deanna said the wrong thing. Not that she thought Jamie would leave the apartment—not after her last statement—but she might leave the bed.

  “Okay. Like a werewolf you know, or just a werewolf, period.” Just a werewolf. Hah.

  “A werewolf. Period.”

  “Okay.” Deanna sighed. “Now I have questions. But first,” she said as she unfolded herself and crawled off the bed, then motioned for Jamie to stay where she was when Jamie began to follow her, “I want a glass of water. You?”

  Jamie nodded, giving Deanna’s hand another squeeze.

  Deanna turned on the bedside lamp; the warm light cast the room in a cozy glow, and made the fact that they were about to have a serious discussion about werewolves seem even more ludicrous. After padding into the kitchen on bare feet, she pulled out two glasses, filled them with water, went back to the bed and passed one to Jamie.

  Jamie gave a quick nod, not meeting Deanna’s eyes. Despite Deanna’s assurance that she could stay on the bed, Jamie had moved to sit on the edge of it and now radiated waves of tension. Deanna set her own glass down on the small table, pushed her way between Jamie’s legs and forced the other woman to look up at her.

  Moving slowly so that there could be no mistaking her intention, Deanna ran her fingers lightly through Jamie’s mess of hair, then cupped the back of her head before she brought her lips down to kiss Jamie’s mouth. Jamie was utterly still, but as Deanna tightened her fingers, Jamie’s lips parted and she made a soft sound and moved her free hand to grasp the fabric of Deanna’s tank top at the small o
f her back.

  Deanna pulled away. “Still here,” she murmured against Jamie’s lips before she pulled back to retrieve her glass, settling cross-legged on the mattress. “Cheers,” she said, tapping her glass to Jamie’s.

  “Cheers,” Jamie echoed, her eyes still slightly unfocused in a way that made Deanna take a smug sip.

  Deanna waited until Jamie had taken a drink. “What makes you think that crywolf is a werewolf?”

  Jamie took another swallow. “His eyes—when he sent you those photographs, there was a picture glued to the bottom of the letter.”

  Deanna nodded. The police had been content to take a copy and hadn’t seemed interested in keeping the original. She’d been tempted to throw it away, but Nathan had convinced her otherwise, and so it, along with the two other photographs, remained stuffed into Deanna’s junk drawer. If she had to keep them, she wasn’t going to keep them anywhere nice.

  “That’s one of the, ah… many things your game has wrong about werewolves,” Jamie said diplomatically. “Our eyes are one of the first things to change. Plus, we’re never, ever ‘wolfmen.’” Jamie actually looked affronted by the suggestion.

  “I suppose that’s why he’s so angry,” Deanna reasoned. “If our portrayals are basically caricatures.”

  “Please,” Jamie scoffed. “People are obsessed with the supernatural. If we got all bent out of shape over every inaccurate depiction of a werewolf, we’d never do anything else. It’s no excuse for what he’s doing.”

  “I didn’t say that. He just seems slightly less crazy now that he’s, you know, actually what he says he is.”

  “That shouldn’t make you feel any safer. Someone with a weird obsession on the Internet might just stay weird and on the Internet—but this guy is taking it personally. I don’t know why he’s focused on Wolf’s Run, and I have no clue why he’s focused on you, but he is. And he’s not crazy. You have to be careful, Deanna,” Jamie stressed, moving forward to grip Deanna’s knee. “You shouldn’t go anywhere alone. And I think you’ve got to at least consider quitting Wolf’s Run. I wouldn’t have asked you to if I didn’t believe it was this important.”